There's a lot of tosh in the book trade press (and indeed in the general media) about 'the most powerful person in publishing'. In Britain, the accolade usually goes to Amanda Ross who co-produces the Richard and Judy Show and manages its hugely successful book club. In the USA I guess Oprah Winfrey fills the bill. Once upon a time, the chief buyer at Waterstone's, Scott Pack was deemed to be Mr Big (incidentally his blog is well worth following). Of course, none of these people, however influential, is really powerful. Their impact is rather limited in scope (perhaps a dozen books a year out of 100,000 new titles published), in geography (typically very national) and in genre (fiction and some narrative non-fiction).

I received an email this morning from an old friend and business partner, Li Pengyi, President of FLTRP (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press) in Beijing. He has a new job as Party Secretary and Vice-President of the China Publishing Group which is an umbrella group for a dozen publishers, printers and distributors including, for instance British publishers' principal trading partner for finished books, CNPIEC (China National Publications Import and Export Corporation).

Given China's importance to the twenty-first century world and, in particular to publishing, and given the centrality of this new job, Pengyi gets my vote as the most powerful person in publishing 2007. He is also one of the most professional. Any other contenders?

While on matters Chinese, we are holding the London launch of Picador Asia tomorrow which Dan Watts wrote about in February. One of the launch titles is The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang which brightened my weekend and which taught me more about contemporary Beijing than any number of learned articles.