All the world at the Shanghai fair

This may be due to the fact that China is a new market with a lot of investment, which makes the market very energetic, she says.

Thomas says one good example of a multimedia learning platform is Mandarin learning content hosted by Hanban, the common name for the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.

An example of creative content is talking dolls, which Hanban has created to help students practice Mandarin.

Another is a video cooking game that allows students to learn the name of different dishes and ingredients as one cooks with a video-simulated tool.

"This is very different from learning in the classroom 20 years ago. I think there is a lot of innovation like that in China, and Hanban is just one example. In China there is a massive consumer appetite that helps with being able to create something new."

Globally, China is becoming an increasingly important player in the publishing industry both because of the creative content it produces and its great market demand for content from Western publishers, and this trend can be observed at the London Book Fair.

China has become much more involved at the London fair in terms of both inbound and outbound rights sales since it became the country of market focus at the event in 2012, Thomas says.

"I think it was China, in publishing terms, absolutely coming of age."

However, language is still one major challenge facing the outbound growth of China's publishing industry, and Thomas says her team has been working extensively with Chinese publishers to help them overcome the challenge by providing summaries of their titles to Western publishers so their content can be understood.

"The Chinese publishing market has really come to understand how international rights sales work in more mature markets. Publishing is a very mature market in continental Europe and America, and for China to be present as a country of market focus at the London Book Fair really shows that the Chinese publishing industry is there to do business and is there to be taken seriously."

Wang says that Chinese publishers have traded book titles mostly with Asian countries because Asian markets have more similar cultures and accept Chinese books more readily. But this will change as readers globally grow more curious about Chinese culture and gain a deeper knowledge of it. He cites the popularity of Chinese author Mai Jia's thriller novels in the United States.

"Such popularity would have been unimaginable a few years ago, and it signifies the increasing connectivity between the Chinese publishing industry and the global one," Wang says.

Zhang Kexin and Laura Davis contributed to this story.

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