While western countries groan about their massive trade deficit with China, Beijing is fretting over its burgeoning 'cultural deficit' with the western world. It appears in all walks of cultural life, but is perhaps most sharply seen in the realm of publishing. Every year, tens of thousands of foreign books are translated into Chinese and are gobbled up by Chinese consumers. But conversely, only a handful of Chinese titles are translated for foreign consumption. It's a trend that officials are eager to address. The publishing industry is booming on the mainland, with more than 7 billion books sold each year, producing 44 billion yuan in revenue. And, as the economy continues to surge, there is huge scope for growth. According to Xin Guangwei in his book, Publishing in China, the average Chinese spends about US$4 a year on books, compared to the average American's US$90. More than 100,000 new titles are published on the mainland each year, a tenfold increase in the past decade. But aside from textbooks, the vast majority is foreign imports. While the government decries this, it is, of course, part of the problem. Independent thinking and writing have not exactly been cultivated in modern China, with censorship and persecution often part of a writer's life. Additionally, would-be authors have traditionally been constrained by an educational and cultural background that tends to stifle creativity and encourage conformity. As a developing economy, novelists here also struggle to make their mark in a society that still focuses very much on money and careers. The type of books that dominate the market are in the areas of education, business and self-help, with fiction only accounting for less than 3 per cent of the titles on offer. Zhao Jin, a 23-year-old bank clerk from Hunan , spends much of her free time among the throngs of browsers in Beijing's book cities, as the megastores are known. She churns through management 'how-to' manuals by the dozen, and buys numerous books on learning to speak English and Japanese, but says that she has only read a handful of novels in her adult life. There was also a widespread impression that contemporary Chinese novelists were not in the same league as their predecessors, she said. And even when authors do become popular, the country's abundant copyright pirates conspire to deprive them of much of their rightful income. But despite all the difficulties Chinese writers have had, their fortunes appear to be changing, as many are now being courted by foreign publishers who think they have got something that would appeal to a wider market. Last year, Penguin paid a record US$100,000 for the English-language rights to Jiang Rong's novel Wolf Totem, a mystical adventure story that has sold about 1.2 million copies in Chinese. The early indications were that the book would be a financial success internationally, said Jo Lusby, Penguin's general manager in China. 'We expect to sign deals for up to six new Chinese novels a year from now on,' she said. 'We are very optimistic that there is a good market for them.' In recent years, the range of novels coming out of China has been quite narrow - often 'scar lit', Cultural Revolution memoirs typified by Jung Chang's Wild Swans, or 'chick lit', tales from the sexual revolution like Shanghai Baby and Beijing Doll. Ms Lusby believes that there is a much wider range of Chinese writers now ready to come to the fore. 'The talent is certainly there, across a whole range of styles; it's an exciting time,' she said. 'The western world has shown a big appetite for Chinese movies and Chinese art, for example. Chinese literature has lagged behind other art forms - but we sense that is now changing.' Peter Goff is a Beijing-based journalist