Carrying Forward the Cause and Forging into the Future
The Prosperity of Chinese Publishing in the Contemporary Era
From the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, as an important part in the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, Chinese publishing made remarkable accomplishments in the continuous development and transformation in its 60-year development history. With the deepening of reforms and opening-up to the outside world, Chinese publishing has become one of the core forces in the cause of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics and culture playing a more and more significant role in the construction of the economy and culture as well as in cultural exchanges between home and abroad. The achievements made during the past 60 years prove that China has become a world-class publishing power and developed momentum emphasized by the splendid accomplishments of ancient publishing.
The Scale of Publication has Enlarged Yearly and Publishing Strength Increased Quickly
Since the founding of the PRC, publishing in the mainland has made great strides, although it has experienced some twists and turns and been affected by some negative elements. Especially after the adoption of reforms and opening-up to the outside world in 1978, Chinese publishing made outstanding achievements best illustrated by the following statistics: In 1950, there were 211 publishing houses across the country and 12,153 books were published with total print runs of 275 million. In 1978, there were 105 presses and 14,987 books were published with the total print runs of 3.774 billion. In 2008, there were 579 publishing houses that put out 274,123 books, 7.062 billion volumes and 56.113 billion actual pieces.
The number of periodicals has increased from over 600 in 1977 to 9,549 in 2008, while that of newspapers has increased from 200 in the past to nearly 1943 in 2008 with 44.292 billion pieces. Circulation numbers for audio-visual products and electronic publications in 1978 was over 30 million pieces; while in 2008, 11,721 audio products were published in 254 million boxes; 11,772 video recording were published in 179 million boxes; the number of electronic publications published hit 9,668 with 157,706,400 units. The Chinese publishing industry has already achieved a historic shift from a shortage of cultural output to a surplus, from a single medium to diverse forms that meet people’s various and multi-layered spiritual and cultural needs.
China’s publishing industry has made great contributions to the economic development of the country and has had great social benefits. According to statistics from the General Administration of Press and Publication in 2004, the added value of the publishing industry was RMB193.97 billion, accounting for 1.7% of GDP in 2004 and 5% of the added value of the tertiary industry. In 2008, the total price value of books and periodicals reached RMB129.68 billion, the sale value of publications was RMB162.28 billion and total sales for the printing industry surpassed RMB97.69 billion.
In addition, according to prediction made by the research group of the Chinese Institution of Publishing Science in “A Study on the Development Index System of the Publishing Industry in a Welloff Society,” by 2020, the added value of the Chinese publishing industry will reach RMB800 billion, accounting for 1.9%–2.0% of GDP. Therefore, publishing has become a significant part of the national economy, playing a more and more important part in the promotion of economic and social development.
Concretely, the strength of presses in China has grown with the development of publishing groups. There are currently some 25 publishing groups in China. They have become the most organized producers of published materials in Chinese publishing history. In 2006, publishing groups put out more than 40% of the total number of books printed and accounted for more than 30% of the value of all books sold and 30% of the total number of books published in China. The books published by publishing groups account for over one third of all books published in China, which indicate that publishing groups have become the most important force in the development of Chinese publishing. Meanwhile, among the many publishing groups, the most powerful, the China Publishing Group, represents the development level of Chinese publishing in the contemporary era.
Aiming to meet the needs of reform and development of the publishing industry, the China Publishing Group, a national large-scale publishing institution, was established on April 9th, 2002 with China Publishing Group as the parent company. The company is made up of 14 subsidiary including the People’s Literature Publishing House, the Commercial Press, Zhonghua Book Company, Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, China Fine Arts Publishing Group, People’s Music Publishing House, SDX Joint Publishing Company, China Translation and Publishing Corporation, Oriental Publishing Center, Modern Education Press, Xinhua Bookstore Head Office, China National Publications Import & Export (Group) Corporation, China Book Business Report and Rongbao Zhai Press. It contains holding companies, mutual shareholding companies and affiliated companies including Zhongxinlian Corporation, Zhongbanlian Corporation, Digital Media Company of China Publishing Group. The Group is a large-scale enterprise that integrates publishing and marketing, chain-operations, import and export trade, copyright trade, printing and reproduction, information technology services, scientific research and development and fundraising, participate in national publishing plans, national publishing awards, the retail market for books, mass publication sales, export and import of publications and so on.