A new generation of scientists in China, who has invented the Chinese character laser printing technology which still dominates international Chinese printing today, is taking pains to seize a major market share in alphabetic printing, according to Zhang Jinfu, a retired senior official, who has witnessed the vicissitudes of the country's printing sector in the past half century.

"The progress of China's printing technology in the last two decades has convinced me that the Chinese are fully capable of developing things with independent intellectual property rights and also getting access to markets in the developed world," 88-year-old Zhang said in his article published recently in the "Economic Daily" -- "The Second Revolution of China's Printing Technology".

As early as 6th to 7th centuries A.D., the Chinese, inspired by the skills of seal engraving and stone sculpture, had developed the wood-block printing technology. Some 400 years later during the Song Dynasty (960-1127 A.D.), they invented movable type printing. As the new printing skills spread to other parts of the world along with another Chinese invention -- paper -- a new era of human civilization opened.

However, when lead type was introduced in Europe in the 15th century and machines became widely used in the Western printing, China lost its leading status in printing technology and it has taken centuries of painstaking efforts for the Chinese printers to catch up with Western counterparts.

"In the 1970s, it took an average of 500 days for a Chinese publishing house to publish a book," Zhang recalled. Although the world had entered the era of laser printing with the British invention of laser photocomposition machine in 1976, workers in all Chinese printing houses in the early 1980s were still toiling among mountains of cumbersome, ink-smearing lead type.

Shortly after China launched its reform and opening-up drive in the late 1970s, the Chinese government decided to boost its outmoded printing industry with a major technological retooling, so as to cope with the demand for more information and the faster spread of knowledge.

In 1975, a group of young scholars, headed by Professor Wang Xuan of prestigious Beijing University, were hand-picked for conducting researches on the computer processing of Chinese characters, the crux of the Chinese laser printing technology.

Various departments of the State Council, or the Chinese cabinet, offered full support to Wang and his research team. President Jiang Zemin, then deputy director of the State Import and Export Management Committee, also provided sufficient foreign exchange for the scientists to purchase key research instruments from abroad.

However, as written Chinese has more than 47,000 different characters of which some 6,700 are frequently used, it is widely recognized that Chinese character computer processing is much more knotted than the Western alphabetic processing, which involves only 26 letters. It has posed more challenges as the new printing software must be capable of processing simultaneously both Chinese and Western words.

Second revolution of Chinese printing

It took five years and thousands of tests for Wang and his colleagues to develop the first prototype machine, which they named "Hua Guang (Light of China) Model I", and seven more years to make the indigenous laser photocomposition technology fully practical.

In December, 1987, the Beijing-based Economic Daily, after installing the latest version of the "Hua Guang" Computerized Laser Photocomposition System, became the world's first Chinese newspaper using computer and laser technology for page design and printing. The whole lead type library of the newspaper was discarded and tons of type sold for recycling.

By 1995, all newspapers in China -- more than 1,500 -- had adopted laser photocomposition. All major publishing houses accepted this new technology around the same time.

"This signifies the Chinese printing industry bidding farewell to the age of 'lead and fire' and entering the stage of 'light and electricity'," said Zhang. "It can be called the second revolution of Chinese printing which is just as important as the leap from wood blocks to movable type."

After taking the domestic market, the "Hua Guang" system soon became popular worldwide with its high performance and comparatively low cost. An overwhelming majority of Chinese language print media and publishers out of China now use it.

For his eminent contributions, Wang, after being elected into the Chinese Academy of Sciences and joining the board of directors of the Beijing-based image and language processing giant, the Founder Group, received the 2001 National Science and Technology Award, the top honor for Chinese scientists, earlier this year.

But he and his fellow researchers cherish still greater ambitions. According to sources within the Founder Group, the "Hua Guang" system has now developed Japanese and Western language versions with the aim of grabbing more market share in Japan, Europe and North America.

"Chinese scientists will never be content with the achievements they have already attained. They will keep on exploring the new horizon of printing technology," Zhang said.

( July 3, 2002)