The technological situation Printing is one of four inventions of ancient China. However, China! s printing technology was backward until recently. Since 1978 when China started economic reform and opening to the world, China! s printing and printing equipment industries have developed impressively. Chinese companies have started to use! ^0 color offset printing, electronic color separation, laser phototypesetting, in-line automatic binding! +/-, and gradually marched into the era of computerization.
By 1996 over 90 per cent of typesetting in China was computerized (Drury, 1998).
Offset printing has become a dominant process in publication and package printing houses. The total national production of publication printing in 1999 is 61. 57 million reams (500 sheet/ ream), including 50.
29 million reams of books by offset printing, amounting to 82% of the total. Newspapers are completely printed by offset printing (Wu, 2001).
On the other hand, China! s publishing technology is yet to bridge the large gap to match developed countries (Wu, 2001).
For instance, the image reproduction process composed of pre-press, press and post-press, still remain in separately operating state; automation and efficiency have to be upgraded; digital ization and the networks integrated system also needs to be developed. The quality of most locally made paper is also an important problem. The problem stems from a lack of investment in modern papermaking machinery and controls.
The Essay on Printing and its influence on the intellectual life
The history of printing dated back as early as 868 AD when the Chinese used it to produce the earliest dated printed book known as the “Diamond Sutra. ” However, it is believed that book printing may have occurred even before that. Around 1041, the movable clay type printing system was first invented by Bi Sheng in China. Later on, the metal movable type was invented in Korea in 1230. At around ...
Although some plants are being modernized, it will be quite some time before the consistency of Chinese paper is sufficiently good to allow for trouble-free running of large presses and to meet the increasing demand for color printing (Drury, 1998).
In 2001, the market share for local printing equipment was only 38%. In 2001, the printing equipment exported from China only took up 0. 1% of the world total volume in the international market.
The value of imported printing equipment was up to USD 1, 370 million, an increase of 52% over the year of 2000. Most high-tech equipments in Chinese market in the field are imported, mainly from West Europe, USA and Japan.
