China sets up a booth at the 21st edition of Tokyo International Book Fair in September. Natsuki Sakai/Aflo

The Minister of State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, Nie Chenxi, said on Tuesday that 50 million copies of Series of Key Speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping (2016) have been published, while the figure for Xi Jinping: The Governance of China is 6.2 million copies.

Key events

The minister also said that 2016 saw other books on important events and topics of historic significance being published.

Among them was Ninety Years of Communist Party of China, marking the Party's 95th birthday, also the 80th anniversary of the end of the Long March.

Wang Shuzeng's The Long March was reprinted and is still popular for its depiction of the feat.

"I hope to pass on the spirit of the Long March to younger readers: the spirit of never giving up," Wang says.

More books on the Belt and Road Initiative were also published in 2016.

Avid readers

Among other developments, in the last week of 2016, a plan for a national reading promotion campaign for the 13th Five-Year Plan, the first of its kind, was released.

Earlier, in mid-2016, 11 ministries joined hands to support physical bookstores and encourage creative business to help bookstores upgrade.

"In 2017, we plan to offer better services to the public," says Nie.

Meanwhile, in cities like Beijing, the Xicheng district has already turned many downtown shops into free public reading spaces.

In 2016, many reading-promotion events mainly organized by "avid readers", like the Reading Occupying Subways and the free circulation of books inspired by British actress Emma Watson, were also held.

Publishing going global

The minister also says that the rights to more than 10,000 Chinese titles had been sold overseas so far, and that the value of exports of printed books was now worth more than $100 million.

His ministry, as well as the Ministry of Culture and the China Writers Association, were also sponsoring Chinese books and translation fees to let them go global, he says.

In a related development, Chinese publishers are being seen at many international book fairs while the Beijing International Book Fair has become the world's second largest.

Nie Zhenning, a veteran publisher and director at the Taofen Foundation, says that he was now increasingly seeing publishers pushing to establish overseas branches and purchasing foreign entities as means to increase their international presence.

Multiple languages

But, in a unique move, Pathlight, an English-language magazine under the People's Literature Magazine, is exploring another way to offer Chinese writings to foreign readers.

For each version, Pathlight has two teams comprising both editors and translators - one Chinese and the other from a targeted language - working together to pick and translate Chinese literary works.

Shi Zhanjun, head of People's Literature Magazine, says the project now covers more than 10 languages with a focus on "both established writers and newer faces", and is expanding.

In another development, the minister says that the integrated development of publishing is something that he would like to expand.

He says the integration offered publishers and writers better opportunities since they are now the content providers and producers, giving them a better position compared with five years ago, when e-platforms were gaining popularity then.

The minister says that further integration would be pursued and that he had already selected 20 key laboratories for publishing integration.

In more news on the publishing front, Li Chunkai, vice-director of People's Literature Publishing House, reveals that their new media promotion project goes well, and he sees a revival of print book sales.

As customized books and audio books were grabbing attention from games, publishers like Li were feeling that more needed to be done in 2017.

meijia@chinadaily.com.cn