As the guest of honor, China brought over 150 publishers to the Book Exposition of America in May 2015.

Wu Xiaoping, president of Phoenix, introduced PPM’s business practices and the purchase of an American children’s book company for $85 million last May. One Russian publisher, Vladimir Malikov, said he had to queue just to introduce himself to Wu and that he’s been to China a couple of times on business and feels the Chinese market is vital for publishers like him. He then concluded, “The vigorous Chinese economy impressed me and I’m looking for a chance to work with publishers there.”

A growing Chinese publication market has become a must for the more pragmatic US and European publishers and, in 2013, approximately a third of the 17,613 titles China purchased were from the US. The expo organizers said that their target audience at the expo was writers, publishers, book store owners, library managers and teachers.

Liu Guohui, GM at China’s People’s Literature Publishing House, said that they had imported 405 titles from America, covering authors of best-selling books such as Dan Brown, Stephen King and many others that have become popular in China, meaning higher paybacks to their American publishers and authors in terms of copyright royalty.

One representative of Harper Collins, was ”over the moon” after hearing how well the children’s book, Peter Cat: I Love My White Shoes, was doing in China and concluded, “The Chinese market is one of our fastest-growing markets and I’d love to visit China one day, hopefully with one of our writers, for a book-signing and to see what the readers there have to say about our books.”

At the same time, Chinese readers are eager to learn more about the world, just as readers elsewhere are curious about China, so President Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China attracted a large audience at the expo.