This Day, That Year: May 8

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

The Beijing Book Building opened to the public on May 8, 1998, as seen in the item from China Daily. It was the country's largest book retailer at that time with a floor area of 50,000 square meters.

One year later, the bookstore opened an online shop, with a growing number of people turning to tablets or smartphones for information.

It was one of the country's first brick-and-mortar bookshops to go online.

In 2017, it launched automatic bookselling machines.

With technology, such as artificial intelligence and the internet, the bookstore provides readers with a brand-new environment.

Like the Beijing Book Building, physical bookstores have changed their business models and operations to attract readers.

The latest survey on reading habits from the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication showed nearly 81 percent of adult respondents read digitally, including online, mobile, digital readers and tablets, last year, while the proportion was less than 25 percent in 2009.

The survey found that Chinese adults on average read 7.99 books last year, including 3.32 digital copies, while younger people, ages up to 17, read 8.91 books, a slight increase from the previous year.

In recent years, digital reading has grown steadily across the country, according to the academy.

The annual Government Work Report in March referred to "championing a culture of reading" for the sixth year since 2014.

There were 225,000 bookstores and sales outlets in the country by the end of last year, up by 4.3 percent over 2017. Total sales of publications in the domestic retail sector reached 158 billion yuan ($23.3 billion), year-on-year growth of 11.3 percent, official data showed.