China's Printing Industry in 2021–2025: Packaging Printing as a Growth Engine, Accelerating Toward a Printing Powerhouse Under the 14th Five-Year Plan

Epidemic response and economic growth pursued in tandem

China's economy opens a new chapter of high-quality development

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 struck the world suddenly and severely. China coordinated epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development, achieving major strategic results; it won a decisive victory in the fight against poverty; and it secured great historic achievements in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. These results demonstrated the country's governance capacity and economic development strength, and once again proved the strong resilience and abundant momentum of the Chinese economy.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics show that, at comparable prices, China's economy climbed to a new level of 100 trillion yuan in 2020, while per capita GDP surpassed USD 10,000 for the first time—a historic breakthrough. Under the severe shock of COVID-19, China became the only major economy in the world to record positive growth in 2020, once again providing strong development momentum and valuable market opportunities for the full recovery of the world economy.

China's printing industry breaks through pandemic barriers

Completes a new leap in upgrading from scale-and-speed growth to quality-and-benefit growth

The recently concluded 13th Five-Year Plan period was both the decisive stage for China to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and a critical period for the country's printing industry to shift from scale-and-speed-driven growth to quality-and-benefit-driven growth.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China's printing industry largely kept pace with national economic development; its industrial structure was steadily optimized, green printing delivered notable results, the market environment became more mature, and the industry scale continued to expand. By the end of that period, China's printing industry had become a massive sector with nearly 100,000 above-scale printing enterprises, 2.58 million employees and annual output value of 1.38 trillion yuan. Within it, packaging printing and new-type printing maintained relatively rapid growth, while foreign processing trade in the printing industry expanded steadily.

China's printing industry 14th Five-Year Plan goals inspire confidence

The 14th Five-Year Plan period is a historic juncture linking China's Two Centenary Goals and a critical leapfrog phase for the high-quality development of China's printing industry.

China's 14th Five-Year Plan for the printing industry explicitly calls for continuing to accelerate the sector's green, digital, intelligent and integrated development; promoting industrial structure optimization and upgrading; further raising the industry's scale, intensification and specialization; and achieving as soon as possible the major shift from a large printing country to a strong printing country. It is projected that by the end of 2025, the total output value of China's printing industry will exceed 1.4 trillion yuan, up 3.5% from the output value realized under the 13th Five-Year Plan, keeping China's leading position as the world's second-largest printing country.

Development trends in China's printing industry during the 14th Five-Year Plan period

1. Publication printing will likely maintain relatively stable development.
2. Packaging and decorative printing is expected to continue relatively rapid growth.
3. The share of high value-added printing products in the industry's output value will rise noticeably.
4. The average growth rate of China's printing industry will basically align with national economic growth; during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the average annual growth rate is expected to be around 5%.
5. Inkjet printing, intelligent equipment, LED-UV and EB electron beam curing processes, eco-friendly cleaning agents and fountain solutions, vegetable-based inks and water-based inks will be promoted and adopted across the industry at a faster pace.
6. Digital, internet, information, automation and intelligent technologies will penetrate China's printing industry more widely, making this an important node and critical stage in the transformation from a large printing country to a strong printing country.
7. Modern production methods and business models—including multi-format operations, supply chain operations, diversified operations, automated production lines, intelligent equipment and decentralized services—will achieve new breakthroughs in innovative development and new results in high-quality development.
8. China's printing industry will make breakthrough progress in publication printing, VOCs source control and compliant emission technologies.
9. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, compliant VOCs emission control in packaging and decorative printing will continue to follow a category-based approach and be advanced actively, in an orderly way and in depth.
10. Looking ahead, the production and processing of packaging printed materials will remain an important engine driving the rapid growth of China's printing industry.

Source: China Packaging Network (pack.cn); original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378160.html