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Foreign Languages Press

publishing house located in China

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ1743971
Source-derived summary

Foreign Languages Press is a government publishing house located in China.

Based in Beijing, it was founded in 1952 and currently forms part of the China International Communications Group, which is owned and controlled by the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

The press publishes books on a wide range of topics in eighteen languages spoken primarily outside China. Much of its output is aimed at the international community – its 1960s editions of works by Marx and Lenin are still widely circulated – but it also publishes some material aimed at foreign language students within China.

History

At its founding, Foreign Languages Press was part of China's International News Bureau. The purpose of establishing Foreign Languages Press was to increase international distribution of material for foreign readers, particularly to the non-socialist countries. In 1952, it was re-organized under the Publicity Department.

Foreign Languages Press started publications including China Pictorial, People's China, China Reconstructs, and Peking Review. It also published the journal Chinese Literature, which focused on translations of classics by May Fourth authors, socialist realists, and Stalin Prize winners.

Beginning in the 1950s many works of classical and modern Chinese literature were translated into English by translators such as Gladys Yang, Yang Xianyi and Sidney Shapiro.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Foreign Languages Press” as publishing house located in China. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1952—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1949. The account is most persuasive where Foreign, Languages and Press can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as publishing house located in China. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1743971. VIAF identifies the subject as 152443072. The Library of Congress control number is n80093480. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Foreign Languages Press”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Foreign Languages Press primary sources, Foreign Languages Press archive and Foreign research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Foreign Languages Press” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.