On October 30^th, during the 5^th Cross-Strait Book Fair was held, the Xiamen External Book Exchange Center was upgraded to the Xiamen External Book Group. Over two decades, the fixed assets of the Xiamen External Book Exchange Center have increased to over 200 million Yuan (US$29.2 million) from the original 3 million Yuan (US$450,000).  For its business performance, the annual revenue has increased to nearly 450 million Yuan (US$66 million) from the original 2 million Yuan, and the book sales are 170 million Yuan (US$24.9 million) for fixed priced products.

The Xiamen External Book Exchange Center was founded in 1989, with financial backing from the Xiamen Municipal Government and the China International Publishing Group. At that time, it was only a retail bookstore with 30 or so employees and an area of over 600m². The publishing industry in Xiamen has a natural weakness – a lack of publishing resources within saturated local market, and it has to find new product areas to develop.

Eventually, the Xiamen External Book Exchange Center cast its eyes across the Strait. With correct orientation, it has differentiated itself from Xinhua Bookstore and other book import and export companies, and its development has gradually improved.  Before 2002, in Taiwan, there were  some bookstores selling books from Mainland, but most of the books were illegal, or ‘smuggled into Taiwan’, and communication barriers between both sides of the Strait made it harder to expand business with Taiwan. The Xiamen External Book Exchange Center has expended considerable energy to bring down barriers, gradually expanding its business to export to Taiwan, and has subsequently become a real book import and export company.

In 2009, book sales of the Xiamen External Book Exchange Center are expected to be 500 million Yuan (US$73 million) in fixed price items, including 200 million Yuan (US$29.2 million) from trade with Taiwan, accounting for over 1/3 of book sales from the entire Mainland to Taiwan. In the company’s business composition, book export accounts for 1/3, retail 1/3 and domestic library distribution 1/3. Book sales by the Xiamen External Book Exchange Center increase by 30% annually, and the annual growth rate of retail sales is 60%.

The development of the Xiamen External Book Exchange Center in book imports and exports with Taiwan still has large growth potential. In Taiwan, there is at least a 2 billion Yuan market (US$292 million) for books from Mainland. And in Mainland, there is about 2.8 billion Yuan market (US$410 million) for books from Taiwan. The total market is quite large, but careful and intensive operations are necessary. Currently, the Xiamen External Book Exchange Center played the primary role of information platform, purchase platform, logistics platform and exchange platform between both sides of the Strait, but the future will see it create its new role of copyright trade platform, electronic commerce platform and publishing platform.