In early winter last year, the Jiangxi Publishing Group and the Evergreen Books of the United States jointly held the “Jiangxi Cultural Publishing Week” in Los Angeles. Local Chinese-language television stations and newspapers reported the event with successive and large-amount coverage. The cultural attaché of the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles said: “Jiangxi Publishing Group is the first Chinese organization to have hosted a large-scale cultural publishing week in the United States. The event showcased the new achievements of China’s reform and opening-up drive and economic development, as well as the achievements of the publishing industry. We hope that more Chinese publishers will come to the United States to hold similar activities.”

According to reports, Jiangxi Publishing Group took 475 exquisite books to the event and reached more than 20 agreements for copyright transaction. Of the 12 affirmed projects, nine were for copyright export. Negotiations are still going on for other 10 projects, for example, the agreement reached with the University of California, Los Angeles, for publishing Chinese teaching textbooks and teaching aid materials for the school. Related departments of Disneyland are also contacting the Jiangxi publisher for plans to publish their English-teaching books. The publishing week was a bold attempt. Encouraged by the unexpected success, the Jiangxi Publishing Group and its subsidiary publishing agencies of different specialties have developed clear ideas on how to explore overseas markets in the future. Talking about the original purpose of running the publishing week, Zhong Jianhua, president of the Jiangxi Publishing Group, said that China’s foreign trade of cultural products had been in deficit for long and it was one of the main tasks of the publishing industry to avert the situation. As a member unit of the “China Book International” program, the Jiangxi Publishing Group had long adopted the strategy of “setting foothold in Jiangxi and going beyond Jiangxi.” Jiangxi boasts beautiful ecological environment and rich cultural heritage as well as splendid achievements in the reform and opening-up drive and construction for modernization. And it has large amounts of nice things to recommend to the outside world. We have many books, such as those about Jingdezhen porcelain and Jiangxi’s fine arts and calligraphy, which are popular in international markets. The only regret is that we haven’t done enough to publicize them.

By hosting the cultural publishing week, Jiangxi’s publishers realized that the most important thing is to have good books that will sell well overseas and that effort should be made to improve the content of the publications. Secondly, there should be highly capable translators. Meanwhile, innovative moves should be taken to improve the quality of books in terms of the sizes, paper, binding, designing and printing. Some books may be translated partially, for instance, the title and the list of content, and include a foreignlanguage brief introduction and synopses of chapters, so that readers can acquire a brief knowledge about the books. Books on display at books fairs can include some inserts in foreign languages. The publishers agreed that a lot has to be done to improve the planning of marketing.