A Study On Changes Of Chinese Publishing Technology In The 20th Century

During the ten decades of the 20th century, a great many profound revolutions had taken place in politics, economy, and culture in China, and particularly, the whole world had seen the rapid development of science and technology. Chinese publishing technology had finished the transition from traditional technology to modern one.Through researching and analyzing the evolving history of Chinese publishing in the 20th century in a systematic and comprehensive way, and exploring its motivations, mechanisms and changing patterns to provide a historical reference for the development of Chinese publishing technology in the 21st century, which both has the academic value and practical significance. However, it is still a new field in current academic community from the view of the history of technology to study changes of publishing in China.Defining the meaning, properties and its compositions of publishing technology is the premise of the research. Publishing technology refers to the operating skills of editing, copying chosen information and transferring samples possessed by communication subjects; equipments such as tools and machines which reflects in material forms; software like systems and procedures in the form of network and it also embodies the idea of information organization, work flow and implementing measures during the process of publication. Publishing technology is a unity entity of ideology and operation rather than simple collections of specific technical procedures. The technology includes at least four aspects: editing, copying, medium production and issuing techniques. From the perspective of the historical development, every significant innovation of publishing technology all greatly enhanced human's ability of acquiring information, improved the way of communication between human beings and brought the profound impact on people's life in politics, economy, culture and social life. Therefore, it is reputed as the mother of human civilization.Scientifically dividing the developing periods is the foundation of studying changes of publishing technology. From the view of social formation and technical methods, Chinese publishing technology in the 20th century can be divided into three stages:1900-1949; 1950-1984; 1985-2000; Because of the influences from politics, economy, culture, science and technology and other elements, different stages had presented various characteristics and changing traces.New techniques from western missionaries, new ideas of saving nation by publication, the emerging of modern Capitalism at the beginning of the 20th century all pushed the modernization of Chinese publishing technology. The combination of lead-type and semi-mechanization printing techniques promoted the production efficiency. On the other hand, its outer forms, printing levels and ways of issuing were also fully renewed. With the help of the modern techniques, traditional editing forms and measures had changed fundamentally, and basically formed modern editing institution. The core techniques, manufacturing procedures, organizational patterns and economic scales of Chinese publishing all changed greatly. Besides, it also achieved a dramatic reform from productive forces to relation of production.Publishing as a whole moved on to the production stages of semi-mechanization and mechanization after 1950. Quantity and quality of its sectors were all improved remarkably. All the links were wholly matched, such as editing, plate making, printing, binding, issuing and etc. However, after a long period, the overall growth of technology became slower, and did not make a substantive breakthrough; in addition, the development of each sector didn't keep the same pace. At the beginning of 80's, paper industry basically accomplished mechanization, but due to the limitations of raw materials' supply and research ability, the gap between the world top levels and China was still quit large. Nevertheless, editing techniques at this stage became increasingly perfect and formed specific norms in every links, such as selecting title, setting contents, correction and final version, which represented the mature of the system of editing techniques. Specialized publication institution solved technical problems, like limited areas of covering and deformities and blocked channels. In the aspect of self-dependent technical innovation, new products and machines were few due to the industrial making levels. But it still had some breakthroughs in research and developing fields, which laid a foundation for a revolutionary breakthrough for publishing technology in the middle of 80's.The system of modern publishing technology formed in 1985 and marked as the laser typesetting of Beijing University passed the national identification. With the growth of computer typesetting, publishing bid farewell to "lead and fire" and walked toward "light and electricity"; meanwhile, "digital work flow" has integrated the process of pre-printing, printing and post-printing into a united data format and undivided system. Owing to the wide use of computer technology and development of fiber optical communication, editing techniques tended to digitalization, automation and integration. The born of new types of publishing media like, magnet and light with mass storage which were no longer limited by paper only but appeared in various styles of digital publishing techniques. Publication Issuing and the information management during sales links came into being, under the strong support of the powerful hi-techs and application software of office work and marketing management.A wide use of modern techniques has greatly broadened the scope of publication. The conformation of publication, which was built on the base of mechanical duplication, was not the whole part of publishing. Publishing has begun to head for information production and re-production which were featured by the arrangement of cultural resources and content creation.Taking a historical view of Chinese publishing technology in the 20th century, we can see that publishing is a technique-driven industry. Its formation and development is a complicated historical process, and owes the unique evolutionary laws and presents the characters of acceleration, accumulation, integration and digitalization. It's a product under certain social and historical conditions and its development is not according to the inner technical logical pattern. There are five major driving forces as changes of Chinese publishing technology in the 20th century:technological push force by technological revolution and relative techniques; political push force by culture enlightenment, national movement and cultural building; historical push force by economic growth and social progress; systematic push force by technical innovation policies and reform of scientific research; marketing push force by the rapid process in publishing.The transition mechanism of publishing technology embodied three driven patterns: the dual causality models of technology and need, government behaviors and enterprise behaviors. Different innovative mechanisms have different innovational effects. In the transitional process of the planned economic system to the market economic system, the innovative mechanism of Chinese publishing technology also presented its corresponding changing traces. As the adjustment of national development strategy in1987, its innovation was pushed by government towards the direction of market. In consequence, it accelerated the speed of technology progress, shortened the cycling periods and strengthened the influences of its growth. With the system reform constantly going deeper, the multi-integrated effects of market-directed have gradually appeared.The historical experience and lessons of changes of Chinese publishing technology in the 20th century showed that it was right to absorb the advanced scientific and technical achievements from abroad and make the right direction of pushing forward the innovation for publishing technology. But, if we blindly import the complete sets of equipment and practice the principle of preferring market to technology, we will not only form the technology dependence in certain degrees and restrict the development of national industry, but more worse, in such a particular industry, a slight error will endanger the safety of national information and cause passive situations in politics, economy and culture if we lack self-reliance.The innovation of Chinese publishing technology had passed the stage of "introducing innovation" and is striving for "integrated innovation" and the future will be the "self-dependent innovation". Hence, we must improve the policy environment for technical innovation, change and enhance the mode of technical introduction and build its new innovational body and platform to shape new technical promoting diffusion mechanism. Furthermore, we should also take the market as orientation and insist on the high starting point and continuity to accomplish the leap-forward development and sustainable development. On that basis, the article puts forward the environment,objectives and routes on the innovation of publishing technology and some suggestions to promote technical innovation by institutional innovation.