A symposium focusing on "Chinese culture going global" took place on Dec. 10, in Beijing to discuss how to promote the culture internationally by translating and marketing more domestic publications to readers worldwide.

A symposium focusing on "Chinese culture going global" took place on Dec. 10 in Beijing. It brought together scholars and executives from 44 publishing enterprises and organizations discussing how to promote Chinese culture internationally by translating and marketing more Chinese publications to readers worldwide.

The event was jointly organized by Amazon China and the Chinese Culture Translation and Studies Support Network (CCTSS), a non-profit platform seeking to help discover, translate, create and share high quality works of Chinese culture worldwide.

Amazon vice president Susan Pointer said, "We have been working with Chinese partners since 2011 on the China books project. This provides access to a rich selection of as many as 850,000 Chinese books."

Amazon initially started out as an online marketplace for books and being "deeply rooted in books."

As early as 2016, Amazon and CCTSS began working together to recommend and select excellent contemporary Chinese literary works. Amazon's translation resources and global selling platformhas done much to expand the overseas market for Chinese publications.

"Amazon publishing has also translated and published Chinese literature works, some of which have become top sellers in our overseas category," Pointer added.

Susan Pointer, vice president of Amazon, delivers a speech at a symposium focusing on "Chinese culture going global" on Dec. 10 in Beijing. [Photo courtesy of CCTSS]

According to her, more and more Chinese works are now being exported to the United States and indeed throughout the world. "China now ranks number five in the American translated books category, a substantial growth compared with 10 or 20 years ago when China was not even in the top 10 list. This exciting growth potential continues."

Zhao Haiyun, deputy head of Import and Export Administration of Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, pointed out that,though China has splendid culture and incredible stories, it still faced many challenges in telling them.

"In this digital erawhen circulation conduits matter, how could we better cooperate with the publishers? How can we combine the brick-and-mortar bookstore and online resources? These are all important questions that we need to consider," Zhao said.

Scholars and executives offered their insights during two panel discussion on practice of Chinese publishing going global and how to better promote Chinese works abroad.

According to Xu Baofeng, director of CCTSS, the organization established a close partnership with Amazon in translating and marketing Chinese books several years ago, and the cooperation has delivered good results.

"We hope this symposium can serve as the occasion for executives of publication corporations to exchanges ideas, share experience and work together to tap the world market for Chinese publications," Xu concluded.