Over the past five years, about 2.8 billion school textbooks have been sold in China, with spending on them totaling 20 billion yuan. The data was recently released by China's National Press and Publication Administration（国家新闻出版署）.
The figures also showed that in 2018, 2.93 billion textbooks had been sold at retail （零售）across the country, amounting to nearly 26 billion yuan. If all of them were to be reused, at least 20 billion yuan could be saved each year. These savings could then be used to help build around 40,000 Hope Schools in the country's poorer regions.
At present, free textbooks related to music, the arts, science, digital technology and physical education have been widely reused in many cities. The school textbooks used in these subjects, which don't need to have class notes taken, are considered appropriate for recycling.
The number of textbooks which have already been reused, however, accounted for（占比）only a tiny amount of the total sum. And most of these used textbooks end up in landfills（垃圾场）or are sold for scrap（废品）offline. "With the total amount of money, I got from selling a large bag of my used textbooks, I am only able to buy a new pencil case. " said a Chinese graduate online.
Despite this, some online platforms have been recently experiencing a boom（激增）in second-hand book sales. Data from Xianyu（闲鱼）, Alibaba's online platform for second-hand goods, showed that a total of 1.56 million textbooks had been sold last month. Since this past March, it has seen a 207 percent increase in the number of users between the ages of 15 and 18.
