The Ninth Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF) will be held from May 24 to 28 at the Beijing Exhibition Hall, the organizing committee for the event has announced.

Over the five days, about 100,000 books and digital publications from both home and abroad are to be exhibited.

As in previous years, domestic as well as foreign book publishers will use the fair as an opportunity to show their latest publications.

According to the organizing committee, so far almost all booths have been reserved by publishing companies from China and 41 other countries and regions including the United States, Japan, South Korea, France and Iran.

Publishers from China's Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao have shown particular interest, expecting to dig gold in the dramatically expanding mainland marketplace.

Among the enterprises to participate in the exhibition there are also dozens of web sites and audio and visual product publishers.

Since more and more universities in China are using foreign textbooks, especially computer science and English texts, the organizing committee has decided to open a special area for foreign textbooks. It is estimated that as many as 6,000 textbooks will be on display.

Since it was first held in 1986, BIBF has built itself into a significant annual event over the past 16 years.

According to Wang Huapeng, the director of the department of foreign cooperation of the State Press and Publication Administration, BIBF is the most renowned book fair in Asia and one of the biggest ones in the world.

Different from book festivals, where books are sold, the BIBF, organized by the China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Corp, offers itself as a venue for copyright trading, which has been set as the fair's theme for this year.

(China Daily May 14, 2002)