Foreign passport holders willing to pay higher prices for overseas periodicals find many choices available

An array of publications and newspapers published outside the Chinese mainland are available at a shop in Portman Ritz-Carlton.

SUBSCRIPTIONS for next year's overseas periodicals have started, although it is only the middle of the year.

The procedure is not as simple as filling out the form between the pages of your Time or Newsweek magazines and dropping it in the post. You have to go to the Shanghai branch of China Books Import & Export Company (CBIEC) on Wuding Lu with a xeroxed copy of your foreign passport or joint-venture enterprise business licence.

You may be surprised at the price. A subscription to Time or Newsweek will cost about 900 yuan (US$108), several times higher than in the US.

"The price covers taxation, transportation costs, exchange rate fluctuations, and commission," said a staff member.

CBIEC has monopolized the business for decades. Lack of competition has resulted in the price staying at a high level.

"The price for many magazines is still on the rise," Tang said.

CBIEC started as a department of the State Science and Technology Commission of China in the early 1980s.

The first books and periodicals introduced into China were scientific materials. Now the number of periodicals has grown into more than 300,000.

All the magazines of Japan, over 90 per cent of periodicals from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and between 100 and 200 kinds of publication from other places are available in the Chinese mainland.

There are restrictions for subscription to foreign magazines. Individual subscribers have a smaller choice.

"All science and technology magazines are accessible, but a small range of publications from the social science category are not, including adult and those with an extremely unfriendly attitude toward China," said Tang.

Subscribers from a "unit" - a business entity, an institution or organization - can gain access to all the available publications. Non-profit institutions can subscribe to foreign magazines at a lower price than other "units" because they are immune from taxation.

The CBIEC must turn in the list of magazines requested to the administration departments for approval. Regulations say that for each kind of foreign magazine, the total subscriptions should not exceed 10,000 copies.

And because foreigners are not allowed to engage in publication in China, they have to give justifiable reasons if they are requesting a large number of copies. For example, to be given out in hotels or tourism ships, or special editions to be issued during international conferences.

"The high price helps to control the number," Tang said.

An expatriate can start the subscription at any time. He must maintain the subscription for at least a month, and for a magazine, at least three months. Efficient publishers can deliver papers within three days of your order. People who live in most parts of Shanghai can get their magazines on the day of publication.

The CBIEC also sells overseas publications in the Foreign Languages Bookstore. Back numbers of these magazines should be destroyed instead of sold for reduced prices according to the regulation, which also added to the cost on the part of CBIEC.

But some of these back numbers show up in bookstores and vendors' stands near universities. They become reading materials for students eager to learn English, after the price has been reduced by half at least.

(Star News)