As Chinese language is gaining worldwide popularity, China's publishing houses now cash in on a huge market -- language textbooks, China Daily reported Thursday.

Under an agreement with Macmillan Education and Pearson Education, The Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press will publish 2,000 Chinese language textbooks and online products worldwide, China Daily said.

The press, as China's largest foreign language teaching publisher, had planned to invest around 10 million yuan (1.25 million U.S. dollars) annually in the next decade for selling textbooks overseas, the paper said.

"Chinese language teaching books have a very promising prospect in overseas markets," the paper quoted Li Pengyi, the publisher, as saying.

He said the press would take advantage of this "historic opportunity".

Meanwhile, the nation's influential academic publisher, Beijing University Press was planning to set up an overseas subsidiary in the United States, selling Chinese language teaching books, literary and cultural studies, the paper said.

The press sold about 40 copy rights last year, 95 percent of which were Chinese language textbooks, the paper said.

Smaller publishers, such as Guangxi Normal University Press, is also in talks with counterparts in Southeast Asian nations to provide local schools with language textbooks.

Source: Xinhua