With a brewing standards war heating up, eBooks are expected by many to revolutionize the publishing industry in much the same way that digital music revolutionized the music industry. China in particular has seen considerable growth in both eBook technology uptake and investment, and is expected to reach 30% of the global market the year.
During 2009, the size of the Chinese market for eBook readers was around 500,000 units, valued at around 1 billion Yuan (~€120 million). However, market analysts expect the market to treble in 2010 with iSuppli predicting the Chinese market to grow to 3 million units (12 million worldwide) valued at around 6 billion Yuan (~€718 million).
While thus far the Chinese market has been dominated by local players such as market leader Hanwang large international players such as Amazon, Sony and Apple are being increasingly drawn to the Chinese market. As such, the government has recently announced new regulation aimed at fostering the developing domestic industry for eBook readers, in line with other recent developments under their general indigenous innovation policy.
The regulations issued by Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) will use strict industry standards and entry thresholds to, as ShanghaiDaily.com reports, address problems such as overheated investment, a general lack of industry standards, a lack of content regulation on cyber bookstores, and issues related to copyright.
While Zhang Yijun, a senior GAPP official, commented that “the regulation will help the industry grow in a healthy way,” some commentators are somewhat skeptical with regard to the underlying motivation behind the announcement.
Commentator Stan Abrams described the announcement as a “textbook example” of the infant industry argument where standardization is a “nifty protectionist trick”, particularly in the ICT industry, to get around the GATT and WTO agreements against tariffs. By passing a law mandating an internationally incompatible standard, foreign firms are unable to compete, to the benefit of domestic firms. Of note however, similar attempts, such China’s WAPI security standard for Wi-Fi networks (see here), have not been successful.
Abrams also comments on the proposed coverage of the policy to address ‘content’ issues. China receives a lot of international press regarding its level of censorship, for instance the recent run in with Google, and eBooks represent, as Abrams describes it, a “potential leakage point” of questionable or undesirable, from a government perspective.
As China has been, to some degree, listening to Western feedback to other implementations of the indigenous innovation policy, such as the recent relaxation of the public procurement rules, it will be interesting to see whether such changes will be made to this current proposal of eBook legislation. Furthermore, given the looming introduction of the multi-purpose iPad into mainland China, the potency of legislation for dedicated eBook readers will have in the future is unclear.
