Fourth, the internationalization level is rising and copyright trade developing rapidly. After entering into the 21st century, China’s publishing industry, with a constantly rising internationalization level and unceasing openingup, has made remarkable achievements in copyright business and co-publishing. It not only actively introduces excellent books abroad, but also successfully releases many good publications on Chinese ancient civilization and contemporary culture. In the past ten years, the structure of copyright business in China has improved every year. The ratio of input to output was close to 5:1 in 2007 comparing to the 15:1 ten years ago. “Taking national culture as the mainstream, absorbing external valuable cultures to introduce Chinese culture to the world” the open layout of press and publishing is taking shape. Furthermore, Chinese publishers have frequently shown up in international book fairs including book fairs in Frankfurt, London and the US. The international impact of the yearly Beijing International Book Fair is progressively enhanced. What is worth mentioning is that the 2009 Frankfurt International Book Fair, hailed as the most significant in the world, has seen China emerge as the main exhibitor and China displaying its splendid civilization of 5,000 years and narrating its profound changes with each passing day. With over 7,600 kinds of exhibits, there are numerous Chinese publishing houses at the fair consisting of 272 from Mainland China, 26 from Taiwan and 15 from Hong Kong. With more than 2,000 participants, China has copyright on 2,417 items. According to German official statistics, China is the main exhibitor and has drawn 290,000 visitors. It has effectively accelerated the development of Chinese publishing.
Since the 20th century, it is not only the publishing industry in the Chinese mainland that has expanded rapidly, but also the publishing industries in Chinese Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. Based on co-prosperity and development, the publishing industries in all these places create a pattern of diversity in unity of the Chinese publishing industry and play a positive role in the joint spread and inheritance of Chinese civilization. With a driving development trend that matches China’s ancient publishing industry, they occupy a fundamental position in today’s global publishing industry.
On the whole, the outstanding features of the Chinese publishing industry are rooted in the overall characteristics of Chinese culture and the progressive process of Chinese history. In a word, “classics in the past, innovation in the present.” Its main features can be illustrated as follows:
(1) Time-honored history. From the perspective of historical inheritance, China, as one of the four ancient civilizations of the world, is also one of the early countries to start publishing activities. Since the literal invention and the documentary emergence, Chinese publishing activities have been evolving over 3,000 years.
(2) Rich content. The long-standing publishing activities preserve precious historical cultural heritage for today’s China and the world. In world history, Chinese works and old scriptures are huge in number, and there are plenty of carriers and book bindings. The development and revolution of printing technology, its extensive transmission, consistency and detailed extent, are worth earnest writing.
(3) Unity in diversity. “Diversity” means that the publishing industries from various ethnic groups have made glorious achievements besides the Han’s; and “unity” indicates that the main content of various ethnic groups’ publishing industries still show Chinese civilization consisting of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Nowadays, it presents itself as a Chinese-language publishing layout spanning the Straits, Hong Kong and Macao featuring unity in diversity, mutual benefit and harmonious development.
(4) Profound influence. China’s publishing industry, which has shaped distinctive civilized pattern, not only deeply influences the formation and development of Chinese civilization, but also significantly contributes to the development of the publishing industry in the world. Its outstanding embodiments are the extensive prevalence of papermaking and printing technology as well as the formation of a civilization zone in East Asia.
(5) Constant innovation. Making a general survey of the history of Chinese publishing, Chinese publishing activities at each phase have made new developments and become bigger, displaying a unique evolvement track and colorful development outlook. Chinese publishing culture boasts entrepreneurship and comprehensiveness, illustrated by independent innovation ( papermaking and printing technology) and the absorption and fusion of external advanced cultures (Buddhism Introduction, the acceptance of western culture into China). Hence, it features prominent inclusiveness, which determines that Chinese publishing culture, having experienced thousands of years’ of evolution, can be everlasting and achieve brilliant accomplishments.
This book mainly depicts the development skeleton and overall features of Chinese publishing, running through a remarkable history over 3,000 years in the making.