In 2000, the People's Literature Publishing House published the Chinese version of British author J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The Harry Potter books have influenced a generation of Chinese children, especially those in one-child families, who have grown up together with the characters in the books.

Beijing Horizon, founded in 2002, published The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini in 2006, which has been on the annual best-seller lists for years.

China Citic Press, known for its books on economics and management, has published best-sellers in the past two decades.

These include Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson in 2001, Greed, Fraud & Ignorance: A Subprime Insider's Look at the Mortgage Collapse by Richard Bitner in 2008, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen in 2010, Steve Jobs: A Biography by Walter Isaacson in 2011, On China by Henry Kissinger in 2012, The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in 2014, and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters in 2015.