Editor's Note:
Recently, Professor Lu Xinyu, Dean of the Institute of International Communication and a Changjiang Scholar at East China Normal University, Professor He Mingxing of the School of International Journalism and Communication at Beijing Foreign Studies University, and Professor Deng Xianglian, Director of the Department of Publishing and Culture at the School of Communication at East China Normal University, discussed the newly published book The Galaxy of Books: An Overview of International Publishing (published by Research Press). Combining frontier academic research issues with the practical work of publishing, they proposed that "there is an urgent need to strengthen research on publishing institutions in the Global South."
It is well known that large publishing groups in developed Western countries largely dominate the global publishing landscape, while the publishing and reading habits in "Global South" countries and regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia have long been neglected. The publishing industry is the matrix of mass communication. The publishing industry is facing numerous challenges, as are the broadcasting and journalism industries. The issues they face have many commonalities. The first is the structural problem of imbalanced information dissemination—the Global North holds discursive hegemony, while the Global South struggles to make its own voice heard. Thus, the dilemmas and breakthrough practices of the Chinese publishing industry in international communication are worthy of systematic study and experience summarization.
Why is the urgency of studying Global South publishing so prominent from the perspective of independent knowledge production? How can the imbalance in information dissemination between the Global South and the Global North be changed, and the "hegemony" in the field of international information dissemination be removed? With the advent of the fourth industrial revolution (AI), what kind of reference value and significance do the explorations and experiences of the Chinese publishing industry, as well as the advantages and confidence of the Chinese path to modernization, have for publishing institutions in the Global South during the reorganization, reproduction, and re-dissemination of knowledge and in the wave of digital innovation? The topics raised in this interview may not be resolved in a single article; but the raising of the questions itself means that the answers are on the way. The interview was hosted by Zhang Kun, the planning editor of the book The Galaxy of Books: An Overview of International Publishing.
The Urgent Need to Strengthen Research on Publishing Institutions in the Global South
He Mingxing:
The Galaxy of Books: An Overview of International Publishing originated from the lecture notes for the "Introduction to International Publishing" course for undergraduate and postgraduate students at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2019. During the pandemic, the course was switched to online teaching, and many students, including many international students, enrolled. It was from then on that the book continuously accumulated material and perfected its research framework. The book is currently compiled according to the framework of Area and Country Studies, covering the publishing status, history, and characteristics of countries and regions such as the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Latin America, Africa, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, but the book places special emphasis on publishing institutions. It is well known that large publishing groups in developed Western countries largely dominate the global publishing landscape. In fact, by studying the 50 largest multinational publishing groups, one can basically grasp the current situation and characteristics of the global publishing landscape. However, we have followed the theoretical norms of area and country studies commonly used in Chinese academia and introduced each country and region one by one. The book adopts the theoretical paradigm of Area and Country Studies, but its main feature is the focus on important publishing institutions in different countries and regions.
In addition to the developed Western countries, we also paid attention to the publishing situation in the "Global South" countries and regions, such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. However, when we sorted out the publishing institutions in these regions, we found that the relevant materials were extremely scarce. The book's editorial team spent a great deal of effort to find well-known publishing institutions in these regions with official websites and supplemented them in the book. There are not many academic research results available in Chinese academia on publishing institutions in these regions of the Global South, so the editorial team put in a lot of effort. The book includes both the compilation of the latest materials and some publishing institutions that have never been introduced in China. Taking Africa as an example, Chinese academia has very little information on its publishing institutions; another example is Southeast Asia, as a part of the Asian cultural sphere, most Chinese readers are very familiar with the names of many ASEAN countries. Some people may often travel to countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, but they may not necessarily know about the publishing institutions in these countries. Therefore, after a large amount of data collection and re-compilation, we included the latest relevant content in the book. It can be said that we poured a lot of effort into completing this book.
Foreign Studies University; Executive Director, Center for the Assessment of the Global Reach of Chinese Culture, Beijing Foreign Studies University; He Mingxing
Zhang Kun:
Throughout the editing process, I could feel the foundational work that many members of the editorial board put into this book. The reason I was so interested in this book and strongly promoted its publication is that I believe it can fill a gap in the current publishing field—both the training of publishing professionals and publishing practitioners themselves need to have a global vision and perspective, which is crucial. I would like to ask Professor Lu Xinyu to comment on the global publishing landscape from the perspective of communication and discuss the significance and urgency of focusing on knowledge production and area and country studies in the Global South.
Zhang Kun, Planning Editor, Research Press
Lu Xinyu:
I am deeply aware that the publishing industry is facing numerous challenges, as are the broadcasting and journalism industries. By placing these issues in a comparative perspective, I find that they share many commonalities. From the perspective of the Global South, the imbalance in information dissemination is a structural problem that also exists in the publishing field—the Global North holds discursive hegemony, while the Global South struggles to make its own voice heard. In addition, the dilemmas and breakthroughs of the Chinese publishing industry in international communication are also a structural problem. These commonalities have given me a deep appreciation.
From the perspective of the publishing industry, all current forms of mass communication originate from the publishing industry, which is the matrix of mass communication. Early newspapers and magazines were part of the publishing industry, and the broadcasting and journalism industries gradually differentiated later, but they still have commonalities, such as their close connection to the times—the major developments in the publishing industry have always been closely related to social movements and changes in the times.
For example, the development of the Western publishing industry is closely linked to the first industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism, the rise of the bourgeoisie, and religious movements; the two world wars, the rise of fascism, and the rise of the United States after World War II all had a significant impact on the world book landscape. I believe that the combination of the publishing industry with the most advanced science and technology cannot be overemphasized. The current state of artificial intelligence would be impossible without the prior development of the publishing industry. All corpora originate from the cultural achievements that humanity has organized and disseminated through the publishing industry. Historically, many important publishing institutions have played a significant role in organizing and disseminating knowledge in science and technology, social sciences, philosophy, and humanities (including the compilation of encyclopedias) by collaborating with universities and intellectual elites, connecting the peaks of a civilization's era through the publishing industry.
The impact of the fourth industrial revolution (the era of artificial intelligence) on the publishing industry is essentially a problem of the reorganization, reproduction, and re-dissemination of knowledge. This is the historical mission of the contemporary publishing industry, which determines whether the production and dissemination of human knowledge can break through the limitations of the Cold War and narrow nationalism since World War II and achieve the sharing of knowledge worldwide. With the empowerment of artificial intelligence in the fourth industrial revolution, can the Global South change the current situation of unbalanced and unequal knowledge production? I believe the publishing industry is most likely to drive the achievement of this goal.
The "Global South Academic Forum" (2023) hosted by East China Normal University released the Shanghai Academic Consensus, which proposed to promote a new information dissemination order in the 21st century, change the imbalance in information dissemination between the Global South and the Global North, and build a fair and just information dissemination landscape. In the context of the fourth industrial revolution, can the Global South change the hegemonic structure in the fields of publishing, journalism, and image production, allowing the publishing industries of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia to be both "small and beautiful" while also having a voice and forming a new mode of cooperation? For example, can Global South countries achieve development through cooperation while maintaining diversity and fair copyright autonomy, and achieve new breakthroughs and innovations at the level of publishing organization? These are all issues worthy of our discussion.
In addition, the Cold War played an important role in the history of publishing, for example, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) promoted the publication of many books during the Cold War based on ideological needs. In the current so-called "new Cold War" landscape, how should we oppose both the old and new Cold Wars and break through their limitations? For example, the United States is building a "firewall" in the field of higher education (especially in areas such as chips and biology) to cut off the circulation of knowledge. How should Global South countries (especially those represented by China) break through this pattern and achieve fair and just knowledge sharing? At the same time, the scope of books has gone beyond paper publishing to include multi-modal publishing. How can we more organically integrate it with daily life? In the era of social media, how should the publishing industry take the "people's line"? We are not rejecting the market and traffic, but are pursuing a healthy market full of positive energy. If the publishing industry can find a direction for survival and development from the mass line, and make book publishing closely linked to daily life, it may be able to solve the current dilemma. This issue is equally important for the journalism and broadcasting industries.
From the perspective of the Global South, the publishing industry is closely linked to the construction of nation-states. The Global South Forum once discussed the issue of data sovereignty, and the publishing industry is closely related to data sovereignty. We advocate for the free circulation of information and knowledge, but we also need to have a sovereign awareness of knowledge production, because language, worldview, traditions, local knowledge production, and cultural diversity all need to be understood within the framework of national publishing sovereignty, data sovereignty, or cultural sovereignty. How to balance cultural sovereignty with "going global" and the construction of nation-states (here, the nation-state is not narrow nationalism, but a concept of national integration and mutual learning between civilizations)? Only by safeguarding cultural sovereignty can we achieve mutual learning between civilizations, otherwise, we can easily be held hostage by other cultures. Many small and weak Global South countries are unable to establish their own publishing sovereignty, so their discourse is manipulated by various forces.
Finally, I deeply realize that the publishing industry is an industrial system. Early publishing relied on paper, and now it involves databases. Behind databases is the electrical infrastructure, as well as the overall infrastructure and organizational structure of the publishing house. Every major change in the publishing industry is a process of reorganizing its industrial organizational form, production methods, and communication channels. We are currently facing a revolution of these three reconfigurations. If we can achieve breakthroughs at these levels, the publishing industry of the 21st century will surely present a new look, and I also look forward to the Chinese publishing industry playing an important role.
Professor Lu Xinyu, Director of the International Communication Research Institute at East China Normal University
From Publishing Sovereignty to Data Sovereignty
Zhang Kun:
That is indeed the case. The first and second chapters of this book introduce the landscape and features of international publishing from a grand perspective. I am particularly impressed that the book mentions that international publishing has three prominent characteristics: Anglicization, conglomeration, and digitalization. From the perspective of historically accumulated publications, the proportion of English corpus is extremely high, which means that the ideology, views, and influence dominated by English are constantly being passed down. This phenomenon deserves attention. This is also the reason why we have set today's interview theme as "the urgency of Global South publishing research." We hope to hear more diverse voices.
He Mingxing:
The issue of publishing sovereignty that Professor Lü raised is very critical, and this is a widespread problem for knowledge production in the Global South. For example, Swahili is widely used in East and North Africa, in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia, with 80 million users (some scholars say more than 100 million). During the colonial period, Germans compiled Swahili dictionaries, and British publishers such as Oxford University Press and Macmillan Publishers published some Swahili books. As a national language of the African continent, Swahili was standardized during the period when Western powers colonized Africa, but this was mainly to facilitate the colonial rule of Western powers because a large number of local ordinary people used this language. After African countries gained independence, Swahili had the opportunity to enter the mainstream language of the country. For example, Tanzania's founding president Julius Nyerere translated Shakespeare's works from English into Swahili, and Oxford University Press also published some Swahili versions of primary and secondary school textbooks. However, the publication of Swahili books by well-known British publishing houses such as Oxford University Press, Macmillan Publishers, and Longman Publishing Company after the independence of East African countries was mainly a commercial public relations act to obtain educational publishing projects from these countries.
After the 1980s and 1990s, the economies of East African countries declined and national finances were tight, and Swahili publishing quickly fell into a trough. According to research by African scholars, in the 20 years from 1975 to 1995, only 77 books were published in the entire East African region, with an average of less than four books per year. Based on my search on OCLC, the world's largest library platform, as of May 2025, Oxford University Press has published 456 Swahili books, Macmillan has published 76, the missionary-based Ndanda Mission Press has published 111, the East African Literature Bureau in Dar es Salaam has published 551, and the East African Educational Publishers has published 196. However, the East African Literature Bureau has completely dissolved today. These Swahili books were all published before the 1990s, and after entering the 21st century, basically no new titles have been published. This is the loss of national language publishing sovereignty.
Currently, the proportion of African literary works published in English is extremely high. For example, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, the first African to win a Nobel Prize, had his works published in English; followed by French and Portuguese works, with almost no works written in Swahili. The famous writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote in his mother tongue but was expelled from his home country. The problem of "dependent publishing" and "culturally dependent development" in Africa is worthy of in-depth discussion, so that we can recognize the importance of independent knowledge production. African publishers are fully aware that Africa can no longer rely on Western languages to record the thoughts, feelings, and culture of their own people, but practical limitations force them to rely on Western colonial languages.
I am currently reading a memorial collection for Mr. Henry Chakava (1946–2024). Mr. Chakava once worked at the African branch of the British publisher Heinemann Educational Books. After African countries gained independence, Chakava took advantage of the policy advantages of East African countries' independence, united forces to acquire the branch, and it became a localized Kenyan publishing institution—East African Educational Publishers. He was the first to publish the "African Writers" literary series, the first to propose publishing works by African writers in African national languages, and the first to launch the African Books Collective (ABC), among other things. After his death in 2024, publishers from East Africa, South Africa, and West Africa jointly published a collection in memory of Chakava. In the future, we plan to launch a series of research results focusing on the publishing industry in the Global South (including Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia), with a focus on publishing institutions.
Lu Xinyu:
We have held the Global South Academic Forum for two years and have had exchanges with friends from many Global South countries. We deeply feel that China needs to tell its own story, while the difficulties faced by Global South countries may be even more profound—China has gone through a revolution, established a new China, carried out socialist construction, and achieved a rise, while many Global South countries are still in a neocolonial state. The current discipline-based area and country studies often focus on politics and economics but neglect publishing and journalism, but all political and economic narratives need to be presented through culture and knowledge production. Therefore, publishing research, data sovereignty, and publishing sovereignty research should be included in area and country studies. From my personal academic interest and perspective, I hope that the Chinese publishing community can organize and produce more knowledge about the Global South.
In April 2025, I went to São Paulo, Brazil, for a conference and specifically visited the headquarters and farms of the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, MST). Since its establishment in 1984, the MST has been one of the largest and most influential social movement organizations in Latin America for 40 years. It has reshaped the power structure of rural Brazil through agroecological practices and grassroots education and has become a model for global peasant movements, listed by UNESCO as a "case of innovation in grassroots education." Its textbook Pedagogy of the Land has been translated into six languages, but it seems there is no Chinese version. I visited the Florestan Fernandes National School (Escola Nacional de Florestas e Agricultura, ENFF), which was founded by the MST and is also their cadre training school. The school is named after the famous Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes (1920–1995). His works such as Dependency and Development in Latin America and Class and Race in Brazilian Society are the theoretical sources of the MST movement, and the curriculum design of ENFF (such as agroecology and land law) is also a reflection of his theories.
However, when I searched for information on Florestan Fernandes, I found that he is rarely mentioned in Chinese academia, and his works have not been translated. Most of our translations of the Global South are re-translations through English, and there are very few direct translations of the works of important thinkers who have driven social change in countries such as Latin America and Brazil. This has led to a lack of effective Global South intellectual resources for the Chinese intellectual community when thinking about the major changes in the world, and research on Global South publishing is also extremely scarce in the Chinese-speaking world.
How to change this unbalanced pattern and how to bring important intellectual resources from Global South countries such as Spain and Portugal into the Chinese academic landscape are all urgent problems to be solved.
He Mingxing:
To study the publishing issues of the Global South, in addition to paying attention to the indigenous efforts of these countries themselves, we also need to examine our own experiences. For example, on September 5, 2024, President Xi Jinping delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Beijing Summit, in which he mentioned the topic of the Global South, and that Chinese Modernization provides a reference for African and other Global South countries. Taking Africa as an example, although the Kenyan government established four state-owned institutions to be responsible for the compilation, production, and distribution of textbooks after independence, the newly independent Kenyan government still relied on British publishing groups for knowledge production. Oxford University Press signed a number of government-commissioned textbook and curriculum publishing projects with Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia in East Africa and Nigeria in West Africa. This objectively made it impossible for the educational projects in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria to break away from the deep influence of the United Kingdom. This also led to Swahili remaining at the level of a folk language and not becoming an academic language—African scholars do not write articles in Swahili, and even the social elites of the newly independent African governments considered Swahili to be an "inferior language" or "street language."
Compared to Africa, as a Chinese person, we are fortunate that Chinese is our mainstream language. The Chinese publishing industry has an excellent team of editors who have strict control over words and punctuation, which has laid the foundation for building an accurate corpus. In fact, if a big data model can be established based on Chinese publishing, it will surely create the most professional and accurate AI model in the world. Our in-depth understanding of knowledge production and dissemination in the Global South is mainly to re-recognize the importance of an independent knowledge production system, so as to reflect on and grasp the advantages and opportunities of Chinese publishing.
The "Cultural" Competition behind Corpora and Databases
Zhang Kun:
Many people are currently using ChatGPT and trying to register for an account, but its system is based on English, the prompts need to be in English, and its algorithms, technical support, and the corpora and databases behind it are all supported by English. At that time, I talked with some technical experts who highly praised ChatGPT, but we also have Chinese models such as Doubao, Wenxin Yiyan, and Tongyi Qianwen. The emergence of Chinese models such as DeepSeek now gives us great confidence because it was developed by Chinese people, and its database and logic system are based on the Chinese system. On the surface, it is a technological competition, but in reality, it is a cultural competition.
Deng Xianglian:
In the current technological context, all countries and nations should pay more attention to the construction of their own corpora, which is related to cultural sovereignty. Data has become a strategic resource, and unique corpora are also a strategic resource. If there is a lack in this regard, in the era of artificial intelligence, large language models will lack relevant corpus training, which may lead to cultural bias and discrimination, and ultimately lead to the loss of their own voice.
Professor Deng Xianglian, Director of the Department of Publishing and Culture, School of Communication, East China Normal University
He Mingxing:
The Chinese publishing industry needs to learn from the lessons of the journalism industry after the reform and opening up—when the internet rose, the journalism industry voluntarily ceded its sovereignty, which led to free reposting on the internet. In the era of artificial intelligence, the content of the publishing industry is a valuable resource. I call on scholars, friends, and all publishers in the industry to protect industry sovereignty. If the industry underestimates its own value, it may repeat the mistakes of the journalism and broadcasting industries.
Lu Xinyu:
First of all, the national language is a nation's "living language," a language that is used and constantly created and reproduced every day. It carries all the cultural genes in the history of national development and is the foundation of a nation. Taking China as an example, Mandarin is the standard language, and there are many dialects below it that provide nourishment, forming a "both unified and diverse" form. The standard language has also absorbed many loanwords. We must guard the "source" to have "living water." If all of China were to use English, it would lose its origin. As a former colony, India can only use English as its official written language. This is a historical legacy and a problem that needs to be solved urgently in the construction of India's democratic state—the relationship between dialects and foreign languages has never been properly handled. China has a national language system, and there are also publishing works in various minority languages under Chinese, forming a "living system."
In the era of artificial intelligence, the underlying architecture of large language models such as DeepSeek is still affected by foreign databases. Therefore, there is an urgent need to promote the matching of databases with Chinese large language models at the national level through the Chinese publishing industry. After World War II, the United States suppressed the surging socialist ideas in Europe and the anti-imperialist and anti-colonial socialist forces in the Global South through economic and military means such as the Marshall Plan. At the same time, through the historical narrative of the Cold War victor, it placed socialist countries and progressive forces in a binary opposition framework (such as democracy versus autocracy, state versus society), which is the core of Truman's "cultural Cold War" strategy. The main dilemma of China's current international communication is to break through this binary opposition. The Chinese publishing industry and knowledge production need to break through this pattern, set things right, and re-tell the story of China's socialist revolution, construction, and the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
For example, at the "Global South Academic Forum" (2024) we held last year, we directly brought grassroots cadres and people from China's rural revitalization to the forum to have a dialogue with our Global South friends, and the effect was remarkable. We also took our Global South friends to Rongjiang in Guizhou, southern Jiangxi, and other places to build international communication bases, allowing them to experience it firsthand. We plan to carry out publishing and research around related topics to help Global South countries achieve their demands for peace and development. The development of Global South countries is also restricted by Western debt, economic systems, and "new Cold War" tariffs, among other issues. China and Global South countries should join hands in development and, in this process, rebuild the narrative—not by belittling Western knowledge, but by critically absorbing it with a "take-it-as-it-is" attitude, upholding the right principles while making innovations, and building a worldview and knowledge production system that opposes the "new Cold War" while uniting with Global South countries. For the past 40 years of reform and opening up, the Chinese publishing community has translated a large number of influential works from Europe and the United States, which is a necessary learning process. At the same time, we must find the organic connection between our own knowledge production and national development.
He Mingxing:
There is a saying by Lu Xun, "take the old, restore the ancient, and establish a new school," and this concept also applies to Global South studies. For example, the political trust between China and Africa today originates from the accumulation of the last century. The New China published China Pictorial in Swahili in 1964, and by 1979, a total of 420 issues had been published. Among them, a total of 245 Swahili books were published, and 96 Hausa books were published. In particular, the Swahili children's books had the greatest impact, with a total of more than 60 titles, such as The Fox, The Proud General, The Little Horse Crossing the River, The Magic Gourd, Zhenzhen's Adventures, and The Clam Maiden. A total of 680,000 copies were distributed, almost all of which were distributed free of charge on the East African land. The Swahili children's books published in China constructed an Eastern world that was not only different from the Western English readings distributed by the British colonial authorities and missionaries in Africa but also full of magic and wisdom. Therefore, these Swahili children's books with illustrations became the enlightenment and literacy materials, and even primary school textbooks, for local children.
African scholars have found that the number of Swahili books published by China in today's University of Dar es Salaam library far exceeds the number of books published by Africa itself. This reflects the "cultural mutual assistance" between the New China and Africa. The peaceful development path of the New China, which is built on the foundation of the last century, is worth learning from Africa, which is one of the reasons why Africa, Latin America, and other Global South countries are "looking east" for the third time. There are too many gaps and areas worth exploring in studying Global South publishing from the perspective of knowledge production.
Lu Xinyu:
The publishing industry is the "steel and cement" (He Mingxing's words) and the basic infrastructure of a country's and nation's cultural mansion. Therefore, not only people in the publishing industry but also the whole society should pay attention to the publishing industry because it is closely related to everyone. From a macro-communication perspective, it is also our task to advance academic research in the publishing field. Finally, I hope that the "Global South Academic Forum" can have more in-depth cooperation with the publishing industry and the business community.
Deng Xianglian:
We have international students from Global South countries such as Malaysia who say that they will take the theoretical knowledge and practical experience they have learned at the School of Publishing at East China Normal University back to their respective countries to engage in publishing-related work and become bridges and envoys for cultural exchange between their countries and China. As one of the first batch of schools to be jointly built by the ministry and the university in the publishing field, we will train more publishing professionals with a global vision in the future, so that the publishing industry can become the "steel and cement" of the country, the nation, and society, better tell the Chinese story through publishing, and let the Global North and Global South better understand China to promote the exchange and mutual learning of civilizations worldwide.
