A Study On The "Going Out" Of Chinese Publishing Industry

Nowadays, the surging tide of globalization is beating every country fiercely. Focusing on the economic globalization, the tide has brought about the political globalization and the expansion, communication, collision, conflict and integration of the spiritual powers without boundary that take the cultural concept, life style, value and ideology as the basic connotation. It refers to the "soft power" which attracts the attention from many countries and institutes of theoretical research. The "soft power" is "a method for using the power indirectly", "an assimilated power", the highest state of winning and the essence of the national strategy. However, which is unsuitable to China's current condition of the increasingly consolidating status of the political power and the continuously enhancing economic strength lies in the limited overseas transmissibility and the international influence of Chinese culture with a long history and the limited overseas dissemination and influence of Chinese books with a long history. It restricts the building of the national image and the promotion of the "soft power" worldwide and obstructs the integral improvement of the national power and international influence. What's worse, under the situation that the western culture has flowed over into China through different channels and methods, it threatens the cultural security of China directly. So it has aroused great attentions of the government and leaded to the proposal of the "going out" strategy of Chinese publishing industry and the issuing of some important measures for the purpose of encouraging and supporting the "going out" strategy, such as "foreign promotion plan of Chinese books", "key projects of China's cultural export" and "Classical international publishing projects of China". All of these result in the remarkable success in the book trade, copyright trade, and overseas direct investment. Therefore, the theoretical research of the "going out" strategy is extremely urgent.According to this, the paper taking the new institutional economics as the tool for theoretical analysis,and it makes a systematic analysis of connotation, essence, motivation, main modes,risks and preventions for the" going out" of Chinese publishing industry, the respective roles of the government departments, industrial organizations and publishing enterprises, and the macro, medium and micro strategies which are executable and helpful to the "going out" of the publishing industry by adopting the approaches of documentary reading, expert consultation, investigation, interdisciplinary and so on.The paper holds that the "going out" of Chinese publishing industry is a process of adopting the comparative and competitive advantages of the domestic publishing enterprises to promote the book commodities (or copyrights) to the international book market through different channels directly or indirectly, with its essence as an international business of Chinese publishing industry and an activity of overseas dissemination of Chinese culture, it is also a kind of system arrangement managed by related departments of the state, aiming at the expansion of the overseas influence of Chinese culture, building of the image of Chinese culture, enhancement of the "soft power" of Chinese culture, and realization of the co-integration and co-existence of Chinese and foreign culture and publishing industry.As the "going out" of Chinese publishing industry is a kind of system arrangement managed by related departments of the state, the paper believes that system motivation is the direct and external motivation of "going out", and political motivation, economic motivation and cultural motivation constituted the indirect and internal motivation of the "going out" of Chinese publishing industry.Currently, there are three basic modes for the "going out" of Chinese publishing industry: trade type, contract type and investment type. The trade type refers to the most direct-viewing and simplest overseas markets entry mode that the domestic publishing enterprises promote the finished books edited and published in China to the world with the smallest risks, which is generally the best choice for the domestic publishing enterprises going in the overseas book market for the first time. The contract type refers to that the domestic publishing enterprises authorize the copyright to the publishing institution in the overseas target country (or region) through signing the license contract or agreement of transfer, it permits the institution to engage in the publishing business activities of the corresponding books by using the copyright in limited time and scope under the condition of paying the corresponding remuneration. The degree of business participation and the resource investment of the domestic publishing enterprises are relatively low with the mode of contract type.The investment type refers to the overseas book markets entry mode that the domestic publishing enterprises form productive publishing branch (subsidiary company) overseas through direct investment, including two basic methods of enterprise establishment and transnational mergers and acquisitions.The investment type is a senior mode for the Chinese publishing industry to" going out". As the three modes have both advantages and disadvantages, the domestic publishing enterprises which plan to "going out" may make reasonable choice after the study and judgment of the factors, such as the international and domestic situation, situation of the international book market, actual condition of the publishing enterprises, and so on.The operating environment's great changes made the "going out" of Chinese publishing industry facing a certain degree of risks. There are three basic types:political risk, economic risk, and cultural risk. Political risk refers to a kind of risk that makes the domestic publishing enterprises that want to "going out" suffering the corresponding economic loss caused by the government of object state's acts of state sovereignty on its own benefit needs and won't be constrained by any other foreign laws as well as other changes of the political elements, mainly manifested by nationalization risk, policy risk, transferability risk and war risk. Economic risk refers to a kind of objective economic phenomenon that the changes of operating environment, operating strategies and operating decisions caused by various internal and external uncertainties bring the domestic publishing enterprises which specialized in international operation with new beneficial opportunities or lost possibilities. It has four basic characteristics:objectivity, randomness, relativity and symbiosis, as well as five basic types of assets type, reputation type, price type, operation type and financial type. Cultural risk refer to the possibilities of deviation between the actual benefit and expecting benefit caused by the cultural conflict that results from the cultural difference of different regions, organizations and personalities. This is happen in the process of the operation and management of cross-regional, cross-nations, cross-states, cross-politics, and cross-culture by the overseas publishing subsidiary agents that are created through new establishment and acquisitions by the domestic publishing enterprises. Each of these three risks has its own basic characteristics and form of expression.They are objective in the process of the Chinese publishing industry to "going out" (or has appeared, or is still dormant), and can also be controlled and regulated through some measures.The "going out "of Chinese publishing industry is a complicated systematic project, which is closely get through with the actively participation, mutual coordination as well as practical strategies using of government's chief departments, publishing industry organizations and book publishing enterprises.Meanwhile, western countries that are developed in the publishing industry provide useful experience for us in this respect. The policy supplement of the government's chief departments enables it to perform its deserved dominating role though the strategies and measures, such as made plans, cultivate industry, resources integration, orientation encouragement, platform construction, and so on. There's a certain gap between the expected role and the practical role for the domestic publishing organizations in the "going out"of publishing industry.Therefore, it is necessary to make practical efforts from many aspects, such as market orientation, members' diversification, scientific management and communication internationalization, by adopting the strategies and measures like establishing special organizations, industry representative, industry publicity, industry service, and so on. Domestic publishing enterprise is the real executor and the concrete implementer in the "going out" of Chinese publishing industry, and it plays the main role in this process. The formulating of suitable rules and implementing of the business and content strategy would be helpful to "going out".