The 31st Beijing International Book Fair this month goes heavily into conferences and academic publishing.
Asia’s biggest trade event has enjoyed double-digit growth in exhibitor numbers, with AI and STM topics high on the agenda at Beijing.
The 31st Beijing International Book Fair, themed “Promoting Civilizational Inheritance and Development, Advancing Exchange and Mutual Learning for Win-Win Cooperation”, will run from June 18 to 22 at the China National Convention Centre in Beijing, with Malaysia as the Guest of Honor.
The premium publications section, spanning 500 square meters, features books of two new highlighted themes: titles commemorating the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, and those about world cultural heritage.
This year’s book fair also introduces an exhibition of online literature, bringing together authors and showcasing the diverse appeal and contemporary value of online literature through books, short videos, and cultural creative products.
Besides, the fair will present an intellectual property exhibition for stories from Chinese traditional culture, showcasing IPs such as Black Myth: Wukong, Ne Zha and Dunhuang, in order to integrate quality publishing products with film, animation and gaming.
Furthermore, the 1,200-sq meter BIBF Art Book Fair themed “The Art of Seeing” will display outstanding art publications from China and abroad. This year’s edition collaborates with world-renowned publishers to present multiple high-profile exhibitions, including a David Hockney-themed exhibition co-curated with Thames & Hudson, From the Lo Archive to Visualizing Dunhuang: The Lo Archive Photographs of the Mogao and Yulin Caves, an invitation exhibition about Princeton University’s treasured archives over 80 years, and Penguin’s 90th anniversary exhibition in partnership with Penguin Books.
The event will feature a wide array of cultural and literary activities, including forums, book presentations, signing sessions, and meet-and-greet events with authors.
Organisers say that the fair will hit 1,700 exhibitors, a double-digit percentage increase (13%) on the 2024 edition, while hosting around 20,000 professional visitors. Thirty of those exhibiting companies are UK-based firms, up slightly from the 27 who attended BIBF 2024. All told, there will be 80 countries represented, a rise from 71 in 2024.
The fair also has a significant consumer-facing offer across the weekend, and more than 300,000 non-trade attendees are expected to visit the sprawling China National Convention Center (CNCC). The numbers for the members of the public have increased significantly since the switch to the centrally located new venue, which is part of the former 2008 Beijing Olympics Park.
At any rate, all of this is a welcome direction of travel for an event that continues to regain the audience in its third in-person edition since the Covid pandemic.
Lei Jianhua, BIBF director and vice-president of the fair’s parent organisation, China National Publications Import and Export Company (CNPIEC), is feeling bullish going into next week. She says: “Last year we saw a huge growth in international attendance and exhibitors, and that is set to continue. We are pleased to see new countries represented in Bangladesh, Chile, Croatia, Belarus, Oman, Ethiopia, Kenya and Jamaica.”
The overarching themes of BIBF 2025 continue those of its previous post-pandemic fairs: technology, the children’s market and education/academic publishing, particularly in the Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) arena. The latter corresponds to the surging STM sector in China, and BIBF will kick off with two linked, day-long pre-fair events that touch on this part of the market: the third annual PubTech Conference and the inaugural STM APAC (Asia-Pacific) conference.
Lei adds that, in addition to those conferences, BIBF is “launching a new focus area on academic and digital publishing, with 200 global libraries and research institutions represented. We hope to foster international discussion and co-operation around academic digital content”. It is an apropos time to foster greater co-operation between Higher Education publishers and China’s libraries: a 2025 report in the Chinese Journal of Library and Information Science stated that the country’s university libraries are seeing a massive move from print: in the most recent annual figures, a record 65.8% of institutions’ literature budgets was spent on digital products.
The children’s tranche at the fair has a significant portion focusing on the more traditional side of the market, such as the 10th annual BIBF Picture Book Fair, the hall devoted to younger readers’ publishing that has a mix of professional events and some aimed at kids. The latter includes storytimes, gaming and book launches. Indeed, if you are interested, what might be the hottest ticket on the Saturday (it certainly will not bring up the rear) is the debut of the latest Chinese-language Butt Detective title, the wildly popular picture book series based on a Japanese anime whose main (Sherlock Holmes-esque) character has, well, a backside for a head.
While fun and games will be at the Picture Book Fair, a more serious side will be on show at the half-day World Children’s Book Forum on the last professional day of the fair. The forum will largely explore the intersection of kids’ books and technology, and how that relates not only to publishing but also educational public policy. A number of international big-hitters are lined up to speak, including the UN’s under-secretary general for global communications Melissa Fleming; kids’ publishing veteran and current president of China’s chapter of the International Board on Books for Young People, Zhang Mingzhou; and Elena Pasoli, the director of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
BIBF 2025 arrives in the context of a Chinese publishing market that seems to be climbing out of its post-pandemic slowdown. The huge jumps in annual revenue for the Chinese retail books market in the booming 2010s hit the brakes during and after the pandemic, with the effects still being felt in 2024. Overall, sales last year were at ¥111.9bn (£11.6bn), a drop of around 1.5% on 2023, according to the Chinese market’s Beijing-based sales monitor OpenBook. (Though curiously, book production spiked, with 1.92 million new books released in 2024, a 10-year high). This year has been a different story, with sales up 10.8% in the first quarter, driven by a robust education and kids’ market – children’s accounts for nearly 30% of China’s books sales, compared to around 23% in the UK – and adult titles exploring well-being and the ramifications of AI.
