The Bologna Children's Book Fair this year has reserved a surprise for insiders and visitors: Chinese children's literature. In fact, China seems to have a lot to say in this sector too and its market has been judged dynamic, innovative and, above all, very large. Ahmad Redza Khairuddin, president of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), speaking at the Bologna Fair, highlighted the four factors that make the Asian giant's publishing industry soar: a huge population of potential readers, an in constant growth, a great cultural wealth and a consistent government support. Now China - Khairuddin concluded - wants to dialogue with foreign publishers and industry experts, on the one hand to enrich books intended for Chinese children and young people with new contents, but also to go beyond its borders, albeit immense, and spread abroad the Chinese way of doing literature. Like children from all over the world, even the little Chinese ask books both to help them get to know the traditions and culture of their country, and to guide them in discovering other cultural horizons. In a meeting held in the space of the Fair dedicated to China - an area of 266 square meters - Li Xueqiang, president of the China Children's Press and Publication Group (CCPPG), underlined the great opportunities for collaboration and exchange that open up in general with foreign publishing and in particular with the Italian one. Analyzing the trend of children's publishing in the West and in China in recent years, Patsy Aldana, Canadian publisher and former president of IBBY, showed how the recession has heavily affected the publishing sector in Europe and North America, causing many large publishing houses to give up focusing on quality, turning to more commercial products; in China, on the contrary, the good stability of the publishing market would have acted as a stimulus to raise the qualitative level of the publishing proposals, opening up to innovations and experimentations.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-03/27/c_133219238.htm
