Publishing is globalizing NOW. But how does this work, really?

I have spent quite some time lately, in researching and trying to understand how globalization impacts publishing in the various regions. Parts of this is digging up and digesting dry statistics (thanks to the MANY helping hands, and apologies to all where some – hopefully corrected – mistakes have occured).

But of course, desk research has been enlivened by journeys, as most recently and most fascinatingly, to India and to the United Arab Emirates.

Working on export data (from UK/US into various markets), one huge question has formed in my mind:

Over the past decades, these exports have grown significantly overall, being one of the best indicators for that globalization. Yet this obviously must have produced contrasting patterns:

In some places, this has certainly supported growth of a domestic  publishing scene (e.g. in China), while in other regions, the growth of imports seems to have coincided with a significant decline of an often well established book trade (e.g. in several Arab countries – for a mix of factors and reasons).

While I am working on a first analysis of all this, I am highly curious to learn more on how imports and exports have influenced domestic markets internationally, over the past decade or so.