From July 24 to 27, the 34th National Book Expo, themed “Fragrance of Books, Beauty of Reading,” was successfully held in Hangzhou. On the morning of July 24, Hu Heping, Executive Deputy Minister of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, visited the China Publishing Group exhibition booth. Mao Yuansheng, President of China Publishing Group, and Zang Yongqing, Vice President of China Publishing & Media Holdings Co., Ltd., introduced the Group’s featured books on display.

The Group brought together its cultural brand publishing institutions under the “People’s Publishing Houses,” “China-Prefixed,” “Xinhua Series,” and “Time-Honored Brand” banners, with the core philosophy of “Carrying Forward the Cultural Heritage, Delivering Premium Works, Championing the Joy of Reading, and Writing the Future.” The exhibition featured a concentrated display of over 4,000 titles in more than 30,000 copies, with a spotlight on major cultural publishing projects such as the Encyclopedia of China (Third Edition) and the Book of Jin (the punctuated and annotated edition of the Twenty-Four Histories); award-winning books including Interpretation of Xi Jinping’s Citations of Poetry, The Kunlun Promise, Landscapes, Chinese Characters: Civilization and Life Between the Lines, Sociology Through a Chinese Lens: An Introductory Course to Chinese Sociology, and The World Without; and a host of major new titles that capture original creativity and resonate with contemporary life, such as Mao Zedong as a Man of Letters, Tianxia: China Embracing All Peoples, Hidden Moments: Emperor Kangxi’s Succession and Official Historians’ Fabrication, Encyclopedia of Taiwan · History, Big-Tech Syndrome: From Individual Predicament to Organizational Performance, and Tsai Chih Chung’s Comics of Chinese Traditional Cultural Classics (Chinese-English Bilingual Color Edition). Also on display were premium humanities and social sciences titles including the Modern Chinese Dictionary, Seasonal Reflections on Chinese Classics: Lou Yulie’s Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers, Figures in the Cracks of History, A Bird’s-Eye View of Shanxi’s National Heritage Sites, and Type 2 Diabetes: More Than Just Management; literature and arts titles such as Spring Song, My Pear Blossoms Bloom Afar, End-of-Life Care: The Borderless Patient 2, Three Kingdoms Part One: The Contest for Luoyang, and The Book of Qin and Ritual Music; science, technology, and economy/management titles including China’s Critical Decade: From Catch-Up to Maturity, A Brief History of Intelligence, and Illuminating the Future: AI Stories; and children’s and education titles such as the “Liang Xiaosheng’s Fairy Tales” series, Literary Giants in Textbooks, and Economics Is So Much Fun.

During the book expo, the 17th Readers’ Conference, co-hosted by China Publishing Group and the Publicity Department of the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee, was inaugurated at the Hangzhou International Expo Center. The Readers’ Conference is a national reading promotion initiative advocated by China Publishing Group under the guidance of the National Press and Publication Administration. It has been held for 17 consecutive sessions. This year’s conference, themed “Fragrance of Books, Beauty of Reading,” featured a distinguished lineup of guests including Chen Jin, Ge Jianxiong, Tsai Chih Chung, Wang Shuzeng, Kang Zhen, Wang Xufeng, Ai Wei, Wu Xiaobo, Wang Fan, Lizi Jie, and Mai Su. While staying true to the style of previous sessions, the forum incorporated the distinctive regional character of the Qiantang area and new trends in national reading, bringing the joy of reading to a wider audience. At the event, China Publishing Group donated books worth RMB1 million to 10 grassroots institutions, including the Qianjiangyuan Book Club in Kaihua County, Zhejiang, and established “Readers’ Homes” to support the “Seven Advances” campaign for universal reading. The live broadcast of the event attracted over one million viewers, reaching a total audience of over 100 million people.