Development Of The 20th Century, Half Of The Book Industry

Book business is a special sphere combining commerce and culture. Research on the history of This sphere is of high academic value and has practical significance because it can not only enrich the study of the histories of business and culture, but is also helpful to the present construction of cultural civilization in urban areas.This thesis explores the development of book business of the first half of the 20th century in Beijing from two perspectives.First, by providing the political, economic and cultural background in Beijing, and utilizing many archive materials, the author gives a description of the history of the book business in Beijing in four periods, i.e. pre-20th century, the end of the Qing Dynasty (1900-1911), the period before the war of resistance against Japanese aggression (1912-1936), and the period of Manchuria and after the war against Japanese invasion (1937-1949). The emphasis is on some of the major bookstores and sale sites, thus offering a complete development of the book business in that period.Second, the author does a research and theoretic analysis on the book business development in three aspects: 1. With a comparison of the educational, cultural and economic development in modern times in Beijing, the relationship between the development of book business and that of urbanization is explored, hence the conclusion that the advance of book business in Beijing in the first half of the 20th century is synchronous with that of urbanization of Beijing; 2. New features in the development of book business of the time in Beijing are analyzed and summed up; and 3.Internal structure and operational mechanism of the book business in Beijing at the time with regard to the structures of investment, personnel, management modes and organizational set-up are explained.