Li Pengyi: Person of the Year 2010 in Publishing Sector

BEIJING, January 5, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Li Pengyi, the 56-year-old president of the newly formed China Education Publishing and Media Group, has earned the title of "China Education Publishing Industry's Person of the Year 2010" from China Daily's 21st Century Education Newspapers.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110105/CN24880)

China Daily is China's national English-language newspaper, well recognized by its readers as an important window for "China to understand the world and be understood by the world". While 21st Century Education Newspapers, affiliated to China Daily, are the most popular English education brand for English learners and fans in China.

Li, known in the industry as a workaholic, for the past three months has been working 16 hours a day, seven days a week, surviving on fast-food meals. Colleagues describe him as "a spinning top that never stops".

Having worked for 15 years as president of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, two years as vice-president and Party secretary of China Publishing Group, and another one year as president of Higher Education Press, the veteran publisher says he remains as motivated as ever about steering the country's biggest publishing group.

According to Li, the major areas of focus for the group in the future are educational publishing, digital publishing, and its going-global campaign. It hopes to establish its overseas branch in the first half of 2011, with a prestigious international publisher in charge.

Li spent his early years in Huanghua, a small county in Hebei province. After serving for four years in the army, Li was admitted into what is now Beijing Foreign Studies University, and majored in English.

Li, whose exposure to English came when he was 23, was determined to catch up with his classmates by learning New Concept English - the English language textbook by British linguist L.G. Alexander (1932-2002) - by rote.

He didn't know back then that the popular textbook, first published in 1967, would mark a milestone in his later career.

Upon graduation, he was assigned to work at Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, the then start-up publishing house affiliated to Beijing Foreign Studies University. In the 27 years he worked there, especially the 15 years at its helm, its business prospered and profits soared.

"Publishing is my lifelong pursuit," Li says. "If there were an afterlife, I would be a publisher there too."