Chapter Four: The Merging (2)

After Hong Kong’s return to China mainland, Hong Kong’s economic structure was confronted with challenges and changes as a result of the Asian Financial Crisis, which came all of a sudden. Like all other industries, the printing industry was also hard hit, but C&C was still capable of upgrading its equipment and technology continuously against all odds, while giving ample training to its staff. The Company keeps developing steadily, by upholding the guideline of “First-rate service and Super quality” all the time.

Firmly grasping the opportunities occasioned by China’s economic reform and opening up, C&C developed its business in China and established production bases actively. In the area of publication and printing, C&C (Shenzhen) Printing Ltd. was founded in Chegongmiao Industry Park, Shenzhen, in 1988 and C&C Joint Printing Co. (Guangdong) Ltd. was set up in 1996. In 2001, C&C was the first state-approved joint-venture printing corporation after China has joined the World Trade Organization (WTO). In order to meet the printing demand of different regions in China, C&C Beijing was set up in the same year. In 2004, the Company purchased 150,000 square meters of land in Shanghai’s Qingpu District and C&C Shanghai was officially established.

After years of nurturing, C&C has built up a comprehensive printing network in China. C&C Beijing is responsible to serve the customers form northern China, while Shanghai C&C takes orders from the customers in the Changjiang Delta, and the Hong Kong headquarters is responsible for overseas orders. C&C offers a total printing solution and help customers create more value and save resources.

C&C is also an award-winner of the importance of personnel training and knowledge sharing. A grand six-storey training centre was opened in 2004 next to the Shenzhen factory building for the staff’s on-the-job training, and serves as a venue for the interflow of events for the printing industry, exhibitions etc.

C&C became the first commercial printer to use digital workflow in Hong Kong in 1997. Its Prepress Centre continued to lead the industry by introducing the computer-to-plate (CTP) process into its production line in the following year. Such a process can better utilize human resources, shorten the time of prepress procedure, improve productivity and fasten the production speed. Even for last-minute modification, the operator can handle the situation with ease by means of the computer.

Over the past 30 years, C&C has won over 4,000 printing awards in international competitions, including numerous International Association of Printing House Craftsmen (IAPHC)’s International Gallery of Superb Printing’s Awards, American Gold Ink Awards, Asian Print Awards, Hong Kong Print Awards, and 44 “Benny Awards” given by the Printing Industries of America for 13 years consecutively. With its production Le Corps Humain, C&C was the first printer in Asia to win the Benny Award in the competition. In 2009, it was the third year C&C received the most Benny Awards in the PIA competition, which set an unrivalled record among Asian printers.

2010 marks our 30^th anniversary of excellence. Aiming at sustainable development, C&C will continue to improve by remaining creative and innovative in the years to come.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland won a Benny Award in 2007

Chapter Four: The Merging (1)

Both the Commercial Press and Chung Hwa Book Company faced a time of change in the late 1970s. The two companies were lagging behind other local and international printing companies due to insufficient funding and a lack of talents.

In 1975, the State Foreign Language Bureau invited the Hong Kong printers to visit the Shanghai and Beijing printing plants on the mainland. Such a visit was the first of its kind since the foundation of the new China. During the National Printing Conference two years later in 1977, a year before China adopted its “Opening Up” policy, the participants from the Commercial Press and Chung Hwa Book Company suggested that the Hong Kong businesses should be “opened up”, putting political agenda aside and opting for marketization. The central government thus announced that the two companies should merge in a mission of “acting as a window, bridge and base”, hoping that the new company could be a role model to the printers in China.

The two predecessor companies, Hong Kong Chung Hwa Book Company Printing House and the Hong Kong Commercial Press Printing House, were merged to become C&C Joint Printing Co., (HK) Ltd. in 1980. C&C started to participate in the Frankfurt Book Fair since the merge and has brought back a lot of new technologies and insights. The Company was also the first Hong Kong printer to install Heidelberg’s 4-colour printing machine with remote control device, replacing the traditional letterpress printing with colour offset printing. In 1981, A Study on Ancient Chinese Costumes, a life’s work of a great Chinese litterateur, Shen Congwen (1902-1988) was published. It was C&C’s first high-quality art book. The Company did not relinquish its efforts and printed a series of three art books Palaces of the Forbidden City, Treasure of the Forbidden City, and Life in the Forbidden City in the 1980s. The high-quality of the art books did not fail to amaze the international printing community and they were translated into English, French, German, Japanese and Italian.

The publishing of A Study on Ancient Chinese Costumes is a turning point for C&C in its business development. It offered the Company a valuable opportunity to become an international printer. With an aim to enhance market penetration and provide more professional and speedy services, C&C took the lead in establishing the first overseas office in 1989 in New York, and later the offices in Portland, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Paris and Melbourne successively, thus facilitating the Company’s high printing quality and good services to reach more horizons and establish an excellent brand name overseas.

(To be continued)

Chapter Three: Go South to Hong Kong (3)

Unfortunately, the security printing business was officially forced to stop due to political and economic reasons shortly afterwards. The new PRC government planned to move both the printing plants of the Commercial Press and Chung Hwa Book Company back to the mainland in December 1950. The plan was to merge the two companies with The Joint Publishing Company, Kaiming Shudian and Lianying Shudian to form China Book Printing and Distribution Company but the plan was never carried out due to changed political situations. .

Chung Hwa Book Company and Commercial Press Joint Overseas Textbook Publishing Company formed in July 1951 were responsible for publishing textbooks for overseas Chinese. Different editions such as the Indonesia-Burma edition, Singapore-Malaysia-Thailand edition and the Hong Kong-Macao edition were published according to the conditions of different countries and regions.

Under the instruction of the PRC government, the Commercial Press shifted its focus to academic works published in the West and language tool books. The Press translated a large number of world literatures and academic works in 1958 to 1966, including Baruch Spinoza’s Principia Philosophiae Catesianae (Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, 1663), John Milton’s Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England (1644) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les homes (Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, 1754). The Press also published the revised edition of Ciyuan (Origins of Words) and A Comprehensive Dictionary of English Words in Common Use with Examples and Explanations in 1964.

Chung Hwa had a totally different focus under the new administration. It merged with the Old Classics Publishing House (Guji Chubanshe) and transformed into a publisher with a focus on Classical Chinese works and contemporary studies on classical literature, history and philosophy. Chung Hwa published the Twenty-four Histories (Ershisi shi) during 1858 to 1978. This edition is widely appreciated in the world because of the excellent editing by Chinese specialists.

(To be Continued)

Chapter Three: go south to Hong Kong (2)

Lufei also realized the importance of decentralizing the company’s business after the January 28 Incident. The new Hong Kong Chung Hwa printing plant was established in To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong in 1933. The plant was well-equipped for security printing.  It soon began to print government securities, small denominations of currency, and cigarette boxes in 1932. The first two orders were the printing of government banknotes issued by Guangdong and Guangxi in 1935. Thereafter, the printing house of Chung Hwa Book Company became a major production factory for Chinese currencies.

The Marco Polo Bridge Incident (or the Lugouqiao Incident) marked the invasion of China by Japan, which lasted for eight years (1937–1945). Both the Commercial Press and Chung Hwa Book Company moved and rooted in Hong Kong since then, making use of the special geographic and political position of the city to boost(?) China’s cultural development.

Lufei set up Chung Hwa’s Hong Kong Branch after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, supervising  the company’s printing and publishing businesses in Hong Kong and southern China. After Shanghai was lost to the Japanese in 1937, all the equipment, materials and staff were moved to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong plant continued to operate until the day the city fell into Japanese hands and was forced to print paper currencies for the Japanese invaders. The same happened to the printing plant of the Commercial Press until the surrender of the Japanese in 1945.

The Commercial Press set a target of publishing one book every day to offer people spiritual food during the war. It continued to publish the University Series, current affairs magazines and children books. The Press also formed cost-saving committees in Hong Kong and Shanghai, economized the use of papers and used new layouts to save the precious printing resources then. The Press also tried to ship books back to the mainland to help spread culture and knowledge among Chinese people.

During the Chinese Civil War (1945-49), Chung Hwa was still the currency printer, and was responsible to print Chinese Yuan (Renminbi) after the foundation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 while the Commercial Press had shifted its core business to textbook printing. The press was also the printer of the first and third sets of postal stamps of the PRC.

(To be continued)

Chapter Three: Go South to Hong Kong (1)

The Commercial Press chose to open its first retail store outside China in Central, Hong Kong in September 1914, two years earlier before the opening of the Singapore Branch. Zhang Yuanji revisited Hong Kong in autumn 1923 to look for an ideal site for building a new printing plant. The Catchick Street printing facility was then set up in 1924.

Hong Kong was a perfect place for business expansion since it was a tax haven, and printing materials such as ink and papers could be imported freely from overseas suppliers without tax, which contributed a great deal to cost-cutting. In addition, the Hong Kong printing plant could satisfy the demands in southern China. The shipments could also be transported by sea through Vietnam to Yunnan, Guizhou and southwest China.

The outbreak of the Second World War almost ruined the printing giant. The January 28 Incident was so named as it occurred on January 28, 1932. On that day, Japanese aircraft bombed the Commercial Press in Shanghai. On February 1, fire broke out at the Press’ Oriental Library, also known as Shanghai’s largest library. Fortunately, the production at the Commercial Press recovered a year later. The management then decided to focus on textbook printing and adopted a decentralized management strategy by opening printing plants in different parts of China, including Hong Kong.

The Press’ Hong Kong printing plant moved to a new site in North Point in 1933. With the help of the technicians and machines transferred from Shanghai, the Press was able to carry out new business plans.

Wang Yunwu (1888-1980), the head of the editorial department of the Commercial Press from 1921 to 1929 invited famous Chinese scholars and educators in the country, including Cai Yuanpei, Feng Youlan and Zheng Zhenduo etc, along with universities and academic institutions to form the University Book Series Committee to encourage the publishing of academic works. The Press supported the committee by launching the University Series (daxue congshu) and other sub-series such as Peking University Series, Southeast University Series and the Chinese Scholarship Society Series, with more than 300 works altogether published and printed in Hong Kong. The Press had a turnover of 8.5 million dollars in 1933 thanks to the success of the University Series. The series also laid the foundation of the Hong Kong Branch.

(To be continued)

Chapter Two: The Heritage and the Future (2)

Before the establishment of the Republic of China, the Commercial Press was the only publisher in the country to issue textbooks for primary and secondary school children with a well set of syllabus. However, the situation soon changed when Chung Hwa Book Company (Zhonghua Shuju), the Commercial Press’ greatest competitor, opened for business.

After the the Revolution of 1911 (Xinhai Revolution) , Lufei Bohong, head of several departments of the Commercial Press, resigned from the Press, and with his friends invested 25,000 yuan to set up Chung Hwa Book Company in January 1 1912. Lufei was determined to publish new textbooks that were best for the new era. In the manifesto of Chung Hwa Book Company, composed by Lufei himself, he wrote that “the foundation of education is truly the textbook; while the foundation of the state is education, and if textbooks are not revolutionary, the purpose of education cannot be achieved.”

A primary school text book by Chung Hwa Book Company

The competition between the Commercial Press and Chung Hwa Book Company started and lasted for more than three decades. In order to outsmart the other party, both companies invested heavily in advanced printing machines. The Commercial Press set up the iron-work department in 1912 to manufacture printing machines on its own, while Chung Hwa Book Company successfully invented the bonding type for Chinese characters and phonetic symbols in 1915.

In 1911, the Commercial Press took the lead and made an international reputation by winning awards in several international printing competitions. It also won merits and gold medals in the Italy, Germany and USA World Expos successively. The Commercial Press became Asia’s largest publisher/printer and was among the world’s three largest publishing corporations.

Chung Hwa Book Company took part in the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, United States in 1914, winning nine gold medals. It won another ten special awards in the Peking Agricultural and Commercial Product Fair in the following year. It became a real competitor of the Commercial Press in 1930s in terms of printing technology and market share.

In 1936, 52% of all new books published in China came out of the editorial offices of the Commercial Press, and 16% from Chung Hwa. The competition of the two giants pushed ahead the overall development of the publishing and printing industry in China.

(To be continued)

Chapter Two: The Heritage and the Future (1)

The Commercial Press was found in 1897 by Xia Ruifang, Bao Xian’en, Bao Xianchang and Gao Fengchi. They had all worked in Shanghai’s American Presbyterian Mission Press and knew how to operate a Western-style printing plant. On February 11 1897, the Commercial Press was set up, with three semi-automatic quarter-sized printing presses, three circular foot-pedal presses, three lever presses, and a few roman-letter type casting machines, applying the most advanced equipment and printing technology at that time. The Press took orders from the missionaries along with some commercial printing jobs such as business stationery, receipt books, bills, name cards printing, etc. The management also invested in manufacturing printing machines for sale since 1906.

The Commercial Press, far earlier than any of the other publishers, developed and dominated the textbook market. In 1898, the Press translated a textbook, English and Chinese Primer (Yinghua Chujie), from an Indian textbook of English for English beginners and used the profit to purchase printing machines and open a new firm. The Commercial Press later brought out five more volumes of Advanced English-Chinese Primer (Huaying Jinjie) for advanced English learners after the success of the first volume. Since then, the reputation of the Commercial Press was established and its business flourished.

In 1898, the Commercial Press bought out the Japanese-owned printing house, Xiuwen Yinshuaju in an attempt to expand its business. Advanced printing technologies such as colour photo lithographic printing, copper engraving, photo copper-plate printing and Collotype printing were brought in to go side by side with the traditional movable lead type letterpress printing. The Press also invited printing experts from Japan, Germany and America to train its staff.

When the Qing government announced the educational reform in 1901, the Commercial Press made use of the opportunity and published 27 textbooks for 15 subjects. In 1904, under the Qing-stipulated title, Zuixin Guowen Jiaokeshu (Modern Chinese Textbooks) was published and printed by the Press, which further consolidated its position as the number one printer in China. After the launching of the new textbook series, the Press took up over 50% of the Chinese textbook market.

Zhang Yuanji (1867-1959) joined the Editorial Office of the Commercial Press as director in 1902. Under Zhang’s leadership, for the first time in modern Chinese history, the Commercial Press became a conglomerate encompassing publishing, printing, and distribution and retailing under one umbrella. The editorial office was divided into three sections: Chinese-language, English-language, and mathematics and science books. Zhang also invited Wu Shi (1891-1962), Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), the first chancellor of Peking University, and other famous educators and scholars in China to be the writers of the new textbook series and scholarly works.

(To be continued)

Chapter One: The Origin of Printing (2)

The missionary Dr. Robert Morrison (1782-1834) of the London Missionary Society successfully used the lithographic printing technology for printing Chinese reading materials. He printed A Dictionary of the Chinese Language and a Chinese translation of the Bible. Walter Henry Medhurst (1796-1857), an English Congregationalist missionary and a printer, was also one of the early translators to help produce the Chinese Bible. Medhurst opened a lithographic printing workshop in Guangzhou in 1832, which was the first printing workshop run by foreign missionaries in China. Later he founded the London Missionary Society Press (Mohai Shuguan) together with his associates after the opening of Shanghai in 1842, with the most advanced printing equipment and technology of the time.

The American Presbyterian Mission published The Chinese Repository, a periodical in the 1830s,    after they came to China. The American Presbyterian Mission Press (Meihua Shuguan) was founded in Macau. The aforesaid missionaries invented hot lead typesetting using the Chinese movable type and successfully published the Old Testament.

The Qing government adopted the theory of “Chinese Learning as Fundamental, Western Learning for Practical Use” by establishing the Translation Department of Jiangnan Arsenal in 1867 (pls look up date again, ‘1869’?) and the Jing Shi Tong Wen Guan Translation Office in 1876 (pls look up name and date again, ‘Jing Shi Tong Wen Guan in 1862’?) as part of the reforms introduced during the reign of Tongzhi. With the help of the missionaries, the provincial governments set up government-sponsored printing presses in different parts of China, publishing close to 180 publications of various subjects such as applied science, industry and military, along with the first known modern textbooks.

According to the statistics, 17 publishing organizations with a Christian background were established in 1840-90 in China, including the Hong Kong Ying Wa College Press, The Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge Among the Chinese and the Swatow English Presbyterian Mission Press. There were over 70 publishing companies in the early 20^th Century, producing 32 categories of books in different areas such as astronomy, geography, history, politics and economics.

The missionaries also set up schools attached to the printing press for Chinese young people to learn about the printing industry and its techniques. These schools were the cradles of the first modern Chinese printers. The four founders of the Commercial Press were all graduates of the Presbyterian Qingxin Academy located in Shanghai.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the Father of the Nation, was also aware of the importance of the development of the printing industry. In his book The International Development of China (1920, pp152-153) by the Commercial Press, he wrote, “This industry provides man with intellectual food. It is a necessity of modern society, without which man-kind cannot progress. All human activities are recorded, and all human knowledge is stored in printing. It is a great factor of civilization. The progress and civilization of different nations of the world are measured largely by the quantity of printed matter they turned out annually.”

(To be continued)

Chapter One: The Origin of Printing (1)

The Four Great Inventions (sidafaming) of ancient China, namely printing, papermaking, gunpowder and the compass, mark the country’s advanced scientific and technological development. The discovery of printing is significant as it benefits all mankind by speeding up cultural and knowledge exchange.

According to historical records, Li Shimin or Tang Taizong, the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty, ordered to put Examples for Women (Nu Ze), Empress Changsun’s writing, in print after she died in 636AD. It was known as the earliest woodblock print work recorded in history. The earliest printed book to survive was the intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from the Tang Dynasty printed in 868AD and was found hidden at a cave at Dunhuang in the early 20^th century, which is now one of the most precious collections in the British Museum.

Woodblock printing remained popular in the Song Dynasty (960-1279AD). Buddhist sutras, history books, Chinese philosophy classics, currency and product packages were some of the major products of the period. Jiaozi (paper currency) appeared around the 10th century, which was regarded as the first paper money in history. The very first paper packaging trademark also appeared around that time. The white rabbit trademark of Liujia Gongfu Zhenpu in Jinan was the first to use print advertisement on its packaging. The trademark was a graphic formed by two lines of Chinese characters, “Liujia Gongfu Zhenpu (Liu’s Needle Workshop) in Jinan, the white rabbit in front of the door as the logo” and the image of a lovely white rabbit holding a pestle. The copperplate of this trademark still exists today.

The movable type printing system was invented around 1040AD by Bi Sheng (990-1051). He first made the type with wood but replaced it with baked clay afterwards. Bi Sheng’s invention was very similar to the modern lead movable type and it existed four centuries earlier than Gutenberg’s movable type.

Printing technology developed rapidly during the 15^th to 19^th century in Europe. Machines for anastatic printing, letterpress, lithographic printing, photogravure and plate printing started to replace human labour. Western-style printing was brought by the European and American missionaries in the 19^th century to China when they started to preach the word of God in the Far East.

(To be continued)

My recent project is the translation of The Sotry of Printing: The History and Heritage of C&C. The book reveals a brief history of printing in China, especially the printing story of the Commercial Press and Chung Hwa Book Company in the past century and the evolution of C&C in the past 30 years. It is a very meaningful project because the book is one of the few in the mass market about printing history and it has fulfilled my curiosity as a book lover.

C&C will donate the income from the copyright royalty of the book to the company’s Hope Fund, in order to finance further corporate social responsibility projects. Please buy one to help the children in China!

Click here to know about the general information of the book (Chinese only).

Here is the Forword of the book.

Foreword

Over the past 30 years, C&C Joint Printing Co., (HK) Ltd. which carries the two great names of China’s publishing and printing giants, the Commercial Press and Chung Hwa Book Company, has grown up with China’s printing industry. 2010 marks the 30^th anniversary of C&C. We would like to express our gratitude to our staff, clients, our business partners and our friends from around the world by putting together this book and share these beautiful memories together.

The Story of Printing: The History and Heritage of C&C was originally designed to be a present to our friends and staff. We later decided to publish this book as a popular reader, hoping to share our happiness and experience with the public. We would like to thank the Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co. Ltd. for making the printing history interesting.

C&C is a big, loving family and we have close relation with our retired staff. Mr. Lee Cho Jat, Mr. Shui Hon Hing, Mr. Lo Chi Hong and many other retired staff and a number of friends from the printing industry show great support to the making of this book. Their valuable comments and suggestions provide us excellent sources to make the story of printing more lively and humanistic. As a follow-up to this great effort, we are now seeking opinion from our retired staff and printing experts in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong to produce a detailed history of C&C in the coming future.

The Story of Printing: The History and Heritage of C&C reveals a brief history of printing in China, especially the printing story of the two C’s in the past century and the evolution of C&C. Selections of the company’s most important works and award-winning productions are printed on special papers in order to remake the original textures and the printing effects of the books.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), the father of the Chinese revolutions realized the printing industry one of the most essential elements for a better China. In his book The International Development of China (1920), he wrote, “This industry provides man with intellectual food. It is a necessity of modern society, without which man-kind cannot progress. All human activities are recorded, and all human knowledge is stored in printing. It is a great factor of civilization. The progress and civilization of different nations of the world are measured largely by the quantity of printed matter they turned out annually.”

Being regarded as one of the leading enterprises of our industry, we understand that we will face more challenges and endure weightier responsibility in the future to the development of printing industry in China. C&C will continue to use our creativity and innovation for sustainable development, and evolve ourselves into a global communication organization.

Jackson LEUNG Siu Yin

CEO, C&C Joint Printing Co., (HK) Ltd.

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