Book fair concludes a successful chapter

The 29th Beijing International Book Fair closed on June 18 at the China National Convention Center.

The five-day book fair provided a platform for the meeting and communication of more than 1,500 publishers from 56 countries and regions, including more than 900 overseas publishers, and over 1,000 events for public audiences. Visits to the book fair reached more than 200,000.

Statistics show that trades or future cooperation agreements were made for 2,000 copyrights.

The China Translation and Publishing House affiliated with the China Publishing Group signed a copyright trade agreement with Springer Nature to publish the English version of China's Economic Reform Process by economist Wu Jinglian.

The book analyzes the causes and consequences of China's economic reform and development paths from the perspective of changes in economic policy, presenting a full picture of the economic reform in the country. It also presents the long-standing contradictions and conflicts between the market economy and planned economy in the process of economic reform, as well as the major risks posed by suspensions of marketization and legal reform to China's economic and social development.

The translation work will be completed at the end of June, says Qiao Weibing, editor-in-chief of the China Translation and Publishing House.

As a book that displays Wu's profound thinking and thorough analysis of the country's economic reform process, the English translation will let more readers around the world better understand the process of China's economic reform, he says.

The book is among the translation projects of the first phase of the publisher's program, Translations of Contemporary Chinese Economists, launched in 2020. Others include Huobi Lun (The Theory of Monetary Economics) by Lu Lei, deputy head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, and The New Civilization Upon Data by big data expert Tu Zipei, the English version of which was published last July.

At a forum on the Chinese version of two books by James Renshaw, In Search of the Greeks and In Search of the Romans, recently published by the China Translation and Publishing House, Greek Ambassador to China Evgenios Dimitrios Kalpyris said that the book about the Greeks provides a comprehensive reading of the philosophy, history, art, theater, religion and social structure of ancient Greece, and also ideas about the growth and social development of their rivals, the Spartans.

Federico Roberto Antonelli, director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing, said at the forum that the civilizations of China, Greece and Italy are very important to the shaping of today's world. The youth must learn history so that they will know that human civilizations have long known each other and walked hand in hand for thousands of years, and this friendship needs to be cherished and remembered often, which is the value of the two books, he said.

Liu Bogen, director of the China Publishing Group, said at the event that the two books can offer a window for Chinese readers to better know the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

The book fair also provided a platform for publishers to meet one another.

As a publishing house that has been releasing art books in the international market for eight years, Guangxi Normal University Press invited one of its partners, British ACC Art Books, to make an introductory appearance at the book fair. ACC Art Books, founded in 1966, has been cooperating with Guangxi Normal University Press since 2018 to publish works in English by top contemporary Chinese artists and designers, such as Xu Bing, Zhu Yingchun and Zhang Yonghe.

The most recent fruit of the cooperation is Farmer: Photographic Portraits by Chinese photographer Pang Xiaowei, which presents a curated selection of 160 images from Pang's project on Chinese farmers.

Chinese books in English language