China has decided to launch a long-term programme beginning this year to introduce 100 outstanding modern Chinese literary works to overseas readers, sources with the Chinese Writers' Association have announced.

At the on-going third Writers' Festival in Zhejiang Province, Chen Jiangong, the association's vice-chairman, said the titles will be selected through discussions among the association, authors and foreign publishers.

The programme will help promote Chinese books and introduce more Chinese authors to other parts of the world, said Chen.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Beijing-based Chinese Literature Press published the Panda Book series, similar to Penguin Books, in English, French and German.

Panda Books publishes modern and classic Chinese fiction and poetry from famous Chinese writers, including Wang Meng, Chen Jiangong, Jia Pingwa, Liang Xiaosheng, Shu Ting and Chi Li. The books are often given as gifts by Chinese people to foreign friends.

The new project will be market-orientated, Chen said, and is a renewed attempt to boost literary exchanges between China and overseas.

Chinese literary works have attracted the attention of more and more foreign publishers in recent years.

In March 2004, a total of 26 Chinese writers took part in the Salon du Livre Paris, an annual book trade event. Those writers who attended represented virtually all of China's most famous and important contemporary authors, including Yu Hua, Mo Yan and Su Tong. The works of 21 of them have already been translated into French, with some 15,000 copies sold during the six-day event.