China's publishing industry records 19 pct growth

China's publishing industry saw a 19-percent increase in its gross output in 2010, despite a marked trade deficit with much fewer exported publications than imports, according to a government report released Wednesday.

The industry's gross output topped 1.26 trillion yuan (196.7 billion U.S. dollars) in 2010, with the value-added up 13 percent from 2009 to hit 350 billion yuan, according to a report of China's publishing industry in 2010, released by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) at a symposium in southwestern Chongqing Municipality.

The output of digital publishing in 2010 was up by 31.6 percent year-on-year, and its value-added up 23.7 percent, the report said.

It has been the first time China released figures for the growth of its publishing industry.

The report said that China exported 965,000 titles of books, newspapers, periodicals, audio-visual publications and electronic publications in 2010, up 4.9 percent from 2009.

However, the total amount of exported publications was only about 10 percent of that of imports, it said, adding that such a situation needs further improvement.

The country strives to enhance the influence of Chinese culture worldwide by exporting more cultural products so as to boost "soft power," but the volume and influence of exported cultural products are still far from satisfactory.

The report said that the total revenue of publications' imports and exports climbed 15.4 percent to 6.14 billion yuan, but the gross profit was down by nearly 38 percent to 170 million yuan.

Meanwhile, the country is still restructuring its publishing industry in order to make it more market-oriented.

The number of publishing companies, a majority of which were transformed from state-owned units, rose by about 15 percent year-on-year in 2010, with the gross output accounting for 87.5 percent of the entire industry, said the report.

"China will finish restructuring units of all non-political newspapers and periodicals by September 2012," said GAPP Director Liu Binjie at the symposium.

Last year, the country published 328,000 titles of books, 9,884 titles of periodicals, up 1.4 percent and 2 percent from 2009, respectively, according to the report.

It said more than 1,900 titles of newspapers were published in China last year, with 23 newspapers publishing more than 1 million copies of each issue, including the Reference News, People's Daily, Guangzhou Daily and Global Times, which are overseen by the Communist Party of China.

The report also said there are 245 titles of books for every 1 million Chinese, and an average of 92.5 copies of newspapers for every 1,000 citizens each day.

Source:Xinhua

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