Background materials on the reform and development of the press and publication sectors
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I. Current Development of the Press and Publishing Industry
Over the past 30 years, particularly since the convening of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, China's press and publishing industry has witnessed robust growth in terms of its size, coverage, length of industry chain, technological content and innovation capacity. Between 1978 and 2009, the volumes of books, newspapers and periodicals, and the total output of the printing industry increased by 18.4 times, nearly 10 times and 100 times respectively. China's publishing market has undergone historical changes. The "no-book-to-read" era has been replaced by the "sea of books" era. As press freedom prevailed and media diversified, the varieties and total volumes of books, newspapers and periodicals as well as e-publications grew substantially year by year. The accumulative volume of publications in the past 30 years has exceeded the total in the prior thousands of years. In 2009, China's press and publishing sector generated RMB 1.06689 trillion of total output and RMB 309.97 billion of added value (0.9% of China's GDP that year), RMB 166 billion of which made up 60.1% of the total amount of added value created by the core sectors of the cultural industries. Digital publishing developed particularly fast. Its total output reached RMB 79.94 billion, exceeding the output of book publishing for the first time. The publishing industry as a whole generated RMB 1.03412 trillion of revenue, RMB 89.33 billion of profits and RMB 62.03 billion of taxes. Excluding digital publishing, the publishing sector's total assets reached RMB 1.18485 trillion and net assets (equity) RMB 616.83 billion. Obviously, the press and publishing industry in China is not only a main front of spreading Chinese culture but also a major force in China's cultural industries. As a new engine of economic growth, it is playing an increasingly important role in advancing China's cultural undertakings and changing its economic growth pattern.
1. Traditional types of business are developing on a larger scale in a more intensive and specialized manner while new types of business are springing up as well. In 2009, China saw the publishing of 302,000 titles, or 7.04 billion copies, 1,937 types of newspapers, or 43.91 billion copies, 9,851 types of periodicals, or 3.15 billion copies, 25,384 types of audio & video products, or 400 million cassettes (disks), and 10,708 types of e-publications, or 230 million disks. Currently, China ranks first , first, second and third in the world in terms of the size of daily newspaper publishing, the total number and print run of titles, the size of e-book publishing and the total output of the printing and reproduction business respectively. Such impressive production capacity and output suggests that China is now no doubt a major player in the world publishing industry. Moreover, new types of business have also seen rapid growth including digital publishing, Internet publishing, anime game publishing and mobile publishing. By the close of 2009, 90% of the 581 book publishers in China had taken up the e-book publishing business. In 2009, about 716,000 e-book readers containing over 30 million copies of books were sold in China, with the sales revenue exceeding RMB 2.5 billion. It is expected that three million e-readers will be sold in 2010, generating some RMB 10 billion of revenue.
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