HISTORICAL RELIC: A museum worker in Hefei, Anhui Province demonstrates the use of a well-preserved full set of wooden movable type printing matrices dating from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which was unearthed in March 2005
As China’s economy has boomed, so has its printing industry, making the country one of the leaders in the field. Speaking at the International Printing Forum held in conjunction with the Second China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair in May, Long Xinmin, Director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, said there are more than 180,000 printing plants in China with over 3.4 million workers. The total output value of the printing industry is 332.67 billion yuan, accounting for 2 percent of the nation’s GDP.
In 2005, China published 224,800 book titles and 9,423 periodical titles, representing a total printing of 6.402 billion and 2.751 billion volumes, respectively. The country also printed 40.402 billion newspaper copies.
In the commercial printing field, China’s fast-growing economy, increased wealth, rising production and trade have helped to create a huge market for the packaging and decorative printing industry.
In recent years, China’s printing technologies have developed markedly, including the popularization of laser photocomposition and the development of color plate-making techniques. The whole industry has been moving in the direction of high speed, good quality, digitalization and automation.
According to Long, the total output value of the country’s printing industry is expected to grow by 8 percent annually in the next five years, accounting for 2.5 percent of the GDP by 2010. China intends to develop its printing industry at a moderate pace to become one of the leading printing bases in the world.
Li Qiang, General Manager of Shenzhen Dexinmei Printing Co., likes to cover his face with a galley proof when he takes a nap at noon. He said the light smell of ink makes him feel more relaxed and comfortable.
Dexinmei, a small company several years ago, now has a reputation for printing high-quality products. It won the top prize in the graphics design contest during the Second China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industry Fair.
Having suffered through many hardships, Li said, “For me, setting up my own business was full of fun, because in the process, my university major and interest combined perfectly with my career.”
Dexinmei is the epitome of the newly growing printing companies in Shenzhen.
A publishing hub
Within 26 years, the number of printing plants in the city of Shenzhen has jumped from three to over 1,800, employing 130,000 people. In 2005, the output value of the printing industry in the city was 27.5 billion yuan, accounting for 36 percent of the total output value of the city’s cultural industry.
Of the top 100 printing companies in China, 19, including the top three, are based in Shenzhen, which has become a major export-oriented printing center, with exports accounting for 50 percent of the annual output value. Shenzhen is playing a key role in promoting the Pearl River Delta area as an international printing base and is expected to create an output value of over 60 billion yuan by 2010. Currently, more than 60 percent of high-grade printed matter, 85 percent of telephone directories and 90 percent of the catalogs for auctioned products are printed in Shenzhen.
China has developed three printing bases, including the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai Sea region, where many large-scale printing companies are located.
The Pearl River Delta area, led by Shenzhen, developed quickly in recent years, with the geographic advantage of being adjacent to Hong Kong, a world-famous printing base, and now the annual output value of the area is 60 billion yuan.
The development of the printing industry in the Yangtze River Delta area, led by Shanghai, has been fueled by a dynamic economy and the proliferation of foreign companies in surrounding areas. The annual output value of the printing industry in the city of Shanghai and Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces exceeds 20 billion yuan each.
The Bohai Sea rim region, led by Beijing, has the most dynamic economy in north China, which, together with Beijing’s role as a national publishing center, has helped the region become a printing base in north China.
Over a decade ago, China’s printing industry was dominated by state financing, but now the investors are more diversified. In 2005, of the top 100 printing companies in the country, 62 had foreign financing, 18 were owned by the state, two were privately owned and 18 were joint stock companies.
In 2002, China started the reform of government departments. As a result, publishing houses, Xinhua bookstores and printing plants were no longer under the administration of the General Administration of Press and Publication. Instead, the China Publishing Group and China Printing Group have been formed, which are subject to the leadership of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, respectively. Following that, the press and publication bureaus at provincial and municipal levels carried out a similar reform, making the printing industry more market-oriented.
Foreign capital emerges
With China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, international capital increasingly entered the country’s printing industry. Statistics show that China approves the establishment of nearly 100 foreign printing companies every year, with the total number in the country now exceeding 2,000.
According to Tan Junqiao, Senior Advisor to the China Printing and Printing Equipment Industry Association, the development of the domestic printing industry largely benefited from foreign capital while at the same time the latter shared the benefits of China’s rapid economic growth.
Tan cited Guangdong Province as an example, saying that foreign printing companies have brought advanced technologies, equipment and management expertise to Guangdong, promoting the improvement of the local printing industry and boosting the development of private printing companies. On the other hand, foreign investors have also benefited from the industry’s robust development.
Many Hong Kong companies expanded their factories after they came to the mainland. With reduced labor costs and prior orders from abroad, they were much more competitive than the state-owned enterprises. Most of these Hong Kong companies have gained very good economic returns.
Now, many international printing giants are doing business in China, either making investments or selling printing machines, both of which have generated profits.
Germany-based Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg), one of the world’s leading solution providers for the print media industry, had an excellent performance in China last year. It continued to take the lead in the market share for sheet-fed offset printing machines.
In its 2005-06 fiscal year, Heidelberg prepared to build a new production base in Shanghai to produce printing machines for the Chinese market. This is the first factory that Heidelberg has planned to build outside Germany in the new century. Last year, related contracts were signed and the business license was issued to the company. The new factory will cover a production area of 5,000 square meters with a total investment of 10 million euros.
In addition to diversified investors, the trend of scale development can also be seen in the printing industry. Last year, enterprise groups, or large companies, accounted for a large proportion of the top 100 printing companies in China. Of the top 10, eight were enterprise groups.
In recent years, many printing groups have started joint ventures. As an example, the former Chengdu Military Area Printing Factory, Sichuan Xinhua Color Printing Co. and Jiuxing Printing and Packing Co. Ltd. jointly formed a new printing enterprise, which has become one of the biggest printing companies in Sichuan Province, benefiting from an integration of resources and complementary advantages.
The cooperation between international companies and domestic ones has also drawn much attention. The Beijing-based Beiren Printing Machinery Holdings Ltd. and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. have established a joint venture in Beijing named Beijing Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Beiren Printing Machineries Co. Ltd. The joint venture manufactures and sells sheet-fed printing machines.
Some experts predict that in five years, China’s printing industry will be at the stage of large-scale mergers and acquisitions.
Confidence in potential
Discussing the development trend of the mainland printing industry and its prospects for foreign investment, Tan of the China Printing and Printing Equipment Industry Association pointed out that the fields of package decoration and commodity-related printing will grow most rapidly on China’s mainland.
China has over 4 trillion yuan of domestic retail consumer goods and about $500 billion of export commodities that require packaging and packaging printing, according to Tan. He added that there is also an increasing demand for printing all types of high-quality packaging, receipts, certificates, securities, banknotes, self-adhesive labels and advertisements. Thus, China has imported more and more high-tech printing machines in recent years to meet the demand.
Tan believed that this demand will continue to rise. Taking self-adhesive labels as an example, he said the average per-capita demand is 8-14 square meters in the world while in China it is less than 1 square meter. Thus, the market is full of potential.
Many international printing giants also have confidence in the future of China’s printing industry.
Andrew Copley, Managing Director and Vice President of Global Sales and Operations for the Kodak Graphic Commu-nications Group, said China is expected to become the second largest printing market in 2010.
Having confidence in their future development in China, some packaging and printing joint ventures have continuously expanded their production in the country. Qingdao Haier & Fungchoi Printing Co. Ltd., a joint-stock printing company with capital from Hong Kong, spent over 12 million yuan last year on a top plate-making machine imported from Germany and is now considering expanding its scale, though the company declined to disclose any details about the expansion now.
Digital printing is thought by the business community to be a “gold mine” in the future. During the World Cup season in June and early July, the Chinese people were excited to see a “real-time” portion of the Italian newspaper Corriere dello Sport, which was actually digitally printed by the Fangzheng Group.
According to Fangzheng, the digital printing of newspapers enables foreigners in China to read the papers of their own countries as soon as they are published. It said it believes that providing timely global newspapers will become a new service in hotels.
In the Chinese market, although the growth rate of digital printing is now lower than that of the printing industry as a whole, the market potential and huge business opportunities offered particularly by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo have attracted many business people.
Yoshikatsu Ota, President of Konica Minolta Business Technologies Inc., said his company will further expand its market scale as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo draw near.
Seeking innovation
In terms of the printing industry, China is a big country but has yet to be a strong one, said Long of the General Administra-tion of Press and Publication.
The Chinese are proud of Bi Sheng’s invention of movable clay type in the Northern Song Dynasty over 900 years ago. Will China make further contributions to the printing industry in the near future? How far does China have to go to become a strong country in printing?
According to Long, compared with the world level, China’s printing industry still faces some major problems like low per-capita consumption of printed material--which is only one tenth that of developed countries--an improper industrial structure, a weak basis for scientific research and development, a lack of stamina for technological innovation and of a standardized market order, and the low quality of equipment, labor and management.
Among these problems, the capacity for independent innovation is one of the hottest topics.
Wang Xuan, a famous Chinese scientist who died in February, is a notable person in the history of the printing industry in the country. He invented a computerized laser photocomposition system for Chinese character typesetting in the 1980s, ushering in a revolution in China’s printing industry. If at that time China had decided to import the laser photocomposition technology from abroad instead of developing its own, it would have had to use up a lot of its foreign exchange reserves.
In every field, the government and experts have attached much importance to independent innovation. In June, a Xinhua News Agency report attracted a lot of attention as it said that China has mastered the next-generation printing technology with its own independent property rights.
“Our technological level is almost equal to that of foreign countries, while our cost is lower with bright application prospects,” said Chen Ping, a researcher at the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.