China's Communist government yesterday pledged to dilute the monopoly held by state publishing houses by allowing private companies to produce books legally for the first time in more than half a century.
The General Administration of Press and Publications, the industry regulator, said the government would “encourage and support non-public capital” and “make non-public publishers an important component” of the Chinese language book industry.
The regulator said private investors would be allowed to operate as minority partners of state-owned groups, ending years of quasi-legal publishing by independent houses that spend up to Rmb1bn ($146m) a year to buy or rent International Standard Book Numbers from the state companies to which they are issued.