China may be guest of honor at 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair

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Frankfurt (dpa) - The Frankfurt Book Fair has agreed in principle to appoint China as its guest of honour in 2009, a spokeswoman for the world's biggest book-publishing event said Friday.

Guests of honour at the annual fair gain an opportunity to reach out to German arts mavens and intellectuals through public literary readings, theatre shows and art exhibitions before and during the October fair which is a marketplace for books and rights to books.

Spokeswoman Caroline Vogel said talks between Chinese envoys and the fair office, a unit of the German book trade association Boersenverein, had achieved agreement in principle, but no contract had been yet signed.

This year India is to be the focus country, while Catalonia has won the title in 2007 and Turkey is in line for the 2008 guest role. The guests pay all costs, but generally gain favourable news coverage and can outshine the competition in the cultural diplomacy stakes.

The international publishing industry is keenly aware of the export opportunities in China where rising incomes in a population of 1.3 billion mean growing spending on books. Chinese publishing is set to take off as the government liberalizes controls on the industry.

World publishers stand to gain from translations of both non- fiction and literature, especially from English. German publishers say China was the biggest single foreign buyer of German book rights in 2004, with about 600 manuscripts sold.

At the moment, non-Chinese publishers are not allowed to open operations in China or establish joint ventures there.

Talks have been under way on a Chinese guest-of-honour invitation for some time, with Germany already tagged as the guest of honour at the Beijing Book Fair in August 2007 and German figures in line to receive Chinese book awards there.