Frankfurt book fair highlights China, organizers hope for cultural dialogue

China special guest at Frankfurt book fair

BERLIN — Organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair worked for 15 years to secure China as the guest of honor at their five-day showcase of global trends and best sellers that opens to industry delegates Wednesday.

Organizers are steeling themselves for lively discussions and the possibility of protests at the fair, which boasts about 6,900 exhibitors from more than 100 countries.

In her speech inaugurating the 61-year-old event, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, “There can be — and I am sure there will be — no taboos in discussions” at the fair.

But the director of the German Book Sellers Industry, Gottfried Honnefelder, went one step further insisting that: “We view freedom of opinion as an inalienable right.”

In September, members of the Chinese delegation walked out of a pre-book fair symposium after two authors they had insisted not attend showed up anyway.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping praised the fair for presenting a chance for an exchange in learning about each other’s cultures.

The fair remains the leading trading point for licensing everything from films to video games. It also is increasingly a place to showcase upcoming trends in electronic publishing and other new media forms — books for mobile phones are among one of the strongest emerging trends.

Yet China’s appearance this year is expected to generate the most buzz, given censorship in China. The September spat erupted when dissident writers Dai Qing and Bei Ling attended the symposium, despite a Chinese attempt to block them.

“I hope that this can be a beginning of a cultural dialogue,” book fair director Juergen Boos recently told reporters. “Especially for Germans, this is important. We have seen the impact of discussion; that when you speak with one another, you can tear down walls.”

Some 500 events will feature themes surrounding China, roughly half of them sponsored by the Chinese culture ministry and the other half by the book fair organizers — an attempt to include critical voices as well as those backed by the Chinese government.

“This is not the Olympics,” Boos said, in reference to last year’s highly controlled event in Beijing. “It cannot be controlled.”

Still, Boos believes there has been a relaxation in China and hopes that the fair’s Chinese participants will see the point that discussion is not only possible but often beneficial.

“The role of the book fair is not to be political, it is to listen to other cultures,” said Boos. “We provide a stage, a platform for discussion.”

This year invitations have also been extended to many non-governmental organizations, including PEN International and human rights groups representing minorities such as China’s Muslim Uighurs and Tibetans.

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