To Tsai Lun, who lived in China in the second century A. D., is generally credited the invention of paper. But, there are earlier references to paper-making in Chinese annals. More than a century before Tsai Lun, there is mention of the production of paper, for wrapping and for writing, prepared by women who mashed the waste from silkworm cocoons, spreading and drying the pulp so obtained so as to form thin sheets. This paper was highly prized and in great demand; not unnaturally, having regard to the raw material, it was expensive.
It was in A. D. 105 that Tsai Lun, a high court official concerned with supplies for the Imperial Court, invented a paper made from hemp fibre, rags and old fishing nets. The cheaper raw materials made paper-making possible on a larger scale, and handicraft production of paper began to develop rapidly. Thus, for the first but by no means the last time in the history of paper making, the pressure of demand on limited traditional sources of raw materials produced a technical revolution. The Chinese people have made and used paper ever since, and have developed some of the world's finest handmade papers. Bamboo, which today accounts for about half of all the raw material supplies for China's paper industry, was first used in the third century. Woodcuts surviving from about the year 1640 show the successive stages of the paper-making process during the Ming dynasty. First the bamboo slips are cut and washed. The bamboo "chips" are next boiled in a tank with water to make pulp. Shallow bamboo screen paper molds are then filled with pulp. The damp paper is pressed with a bamboo screen, and finally the sheets of paper are dried over a wood-fired oven.
The handicraft paper industry has expanded considerably in recent years, and makes an important contribution to China's paper supplies. In 1952, it accounted for no less than 32 percent of total production and was planned, in the final year of the current five-year plan (1953-57), to reach 237 thousand metric tons, or, 26 percent of total production. Thus China has easily the most important handicraft paper industry in the world today.
Machine-made paper in China dates back little more than half a century. The first modern paper mills were not set up until the end of the nineteenth century. These were established with imported machinery and relied largely on imported pulp for their operation. However, the industry had a chequered career up to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war. It was technically backward and poorly equipped, and found difficulty in competing with the imported product. Considerable quantities of paper were imported; in the peak prewar year, for example, no less than 70 thousand tons of newsprint reached China from foreign sources. Nevertheless, with nine-tenths of the population illiterate, per capita consumption of all types of paper never exceeded half a kilogram in prewar times.
The cutting off of foreign paper supplies during the war with Japan brought about a certain revival of the handmade industry, and during these years most newpapers, books and magazines were printed on handmade paper. With the end of the Japanese war, foreign imports started to flow in again, adversely affecting the national paper industry. Production fell further during the civil war and by its end in 1949 most of China's paper mills were out of operation. Faced with urgent paper needs, and very limited possibilities of obtaining foreign supplies, the new regime attacked the problems of rehabilitating existing mills and reviving the handicraft industry. Thus the Tsientsin State paper mill, started by the Japanese in 1939, was by 1952 producing three times the average annual output attained under the Occupation. Also in the northeast, the Kirin State paper mill, whose daily output had fallen to 20 tons, was re-equipped and daily output raised to 150 tons. In the south, at the Canton State paper mill, the machinery which had been removed by the Japanese was recovered and re-installed, and by the beginning of 1951 newsprint was again being produced at this mill. In all, by early 1954, 12 paper mills had been reconstructed, including several privately-owned mills, as, for example, the Kongmoon mill in Kwantung province, where new Kamyr type pulping machinery was installed.
During the first phase, efforts were thus concentrated on rehabilitating existing mills and taking measures to ensure maximum output from existing capacity. At the same time, close attention was given to the handicraft industry, which offered the possibility of a useful increase in output without heavy capital investment. Moreover, it furnished employment in an underemployed economy. The rising demand for paper, too, provided favorable market conditions for an expansion. Published figures reveal a sharp rise in the tonnage of paper handled by State trading agencies.
Meanwhile, steps were being taken to lay the basis for a further expansion of machine-made capacity, and to create a native pulp and paper machinery industry.
Two recently opened State paper mills, in Kiangsi and Hupeh provinces respectively, are reported to be entirely equipped with machines manufactured in China. The centers of the pulp and paper machinery industry are Tientsin and Shanghai; and grinders, digesters, filters and bleaching tanks figure among the items being produced.
The most important capital project, however, is, being fitted with Soviet equipment, with assistance from Soviet technicians. This is believed to be one of the 156 major projects forming the backbone of the five-year plan, where Soviet help includes site surveys, designs, installation, training of personnel and help in initial operations. This new mill located at Kiamusze in northeast China. Due for completion this year, it will draw its wood from neighboring forests and coal supplies from the nearby Hokang mines. It includes a large sulphate pulp mill and its production program includes industrial papers, kraft wrappings and bag papers, electrical insulating papers, etc., and 10 thousand tons of market pulp.
Altogether, the 1953-57 plan provides for an increase in annual capacity in the machine-made paper industry of 186,000 tons, of which 40,000 tons had been completed by the end of 1955 and 95,000 tons are expected to be in commission by the end of 1957. This latter figure corresponds to 7 out of the 10 new mills projected. These figures evidently relate only to the new mills, and do not take account of further improvements and new installations designed to raise output at existing mills, since they are some way below the increase in paper and board output provided for in the plan.
Table 1 indicates how rapidly paper production has expanded in recent years. Machine-made paper is one of the industries which has succeeded in exceeding the production figures laid down in the five-year plan. Thus the goal originally set for 1957 has now been revised upwards from 655 thousand tons to 800 thousand tons. In accordance with the revised plan was aimed to produce 710 thousand tons in 1956. It has been stated that the original plan for 1957 included 154 thousand tons of newsprint; no details of actual newsprint output are available.
Thus, taking into account the output of the handicraft industry, it would seem that; in 1957, total paper production will top the million ton mark for the first time. Production in 1956 was sufficient to permit a per capita consumption of 1.5 kilograms. This, though three times that of prewar, is still among the lowest in the world. A further substantial expansion will certainly be provided for in the next planning period. The figure, mentioned for machine-made paper in the proposals which are shortly to be submitted to the State Council for the second five-year plan (1958-1962), is 1,500 to 1,600 thousand tons.
One of China's principal problems is raw material. China is lacking in forests and, though new reserves have been brought to light in recent years, they are mostly in inaccessible areas ¹; the northeast remains, as it was in prewar days, the principal center for forest industries. Wood pulp was produced there on a large scale during the Japanese Occupation, but most of it was shipped to Japan for her rayon industry. Though a further development of the wood pulp industry is now taking place in this area, elsewhere in China the pressure on forest resources for timber for constructional and other purposes makes the search for alternative materials imperative ².
¹ For example, 2 million hectares of forest land in Inner Mongolia are currently being surveyed, aerial photography being combined with ground investigations, while substantial spruce, poplar and birch forests have been discovered in the Tienshan Mountain range in Sinkiang.
2 Though it should be noted that in some areas new transport developments in conjunction with rising coal output have sharply lowered the cost of coal, thus releasing for industrial purposes wood formerly used as fuel.
TABLE. 1. - PAPER PRODUCTION IN CHINA (MAINLAND) 1943-1957
|
Period |
Machine-made |
Hand made |
Total |
|
in thousand metric tons |
|||
|
Prewar (1943) |
165 |
75 |
240 |
|
1949 |
105 |
45 |
150 |
|
1950 |
150 |
80 |
230 |
|
1951 |
250 |
120 |
370 |
|
1952 |
372 |
167 |
539 |
|
1953 |
425 |
180 |
605 |
|
1954 |
556 |
195 |
751 |
|
1955 |
589 |
210 |
799 |
|
1956 Revised plan |
710 |
225 |
935 |
|
1957 Original plan |
655 |
237 |
892 |
|
Revised plan |
800 |
240 |
1 040 |
NOTE: The figures in standard type are either published or derived from published percentages. All other figures are secretariat estimates.SOURCES: For machine-made paper: Annual communiques of the State Statistical Bureau on Plan Fulfilment, and annual reports on the State budget. Also LI FU CHUN: Report on the First Fire-Year Plan for the Developments of the National Economy; CHOU EN-LAI: Report on Proposals for Second Five-Year Plans; and RONALD HSIA: Economic Planning in Communist China, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1955.
The handicraft industry makes use primarily of bamboo but also of rice straw. In the machine-made industry, too, bamboo is an important material; indeed it is reported that experiments carried out by a Soviet expert, N. Z. Veretchin, have led to the production of newsprint with a furnish of mechanical bamboo pulp combined with 40 percent chemical wood pulp. To Veretchin also is credited the introduction of semi-chemical rice straw pulp. This went into large-scale production in 1952 at the Peking State paper mill and the process was subsequently widely adopted. In southwest China, bagasse has been used for some time to produce board. Today, fine papers, said to be inexpensive and of high quality, are being made from bagasse, a development which is also attributed to successful experiments carried out by Veretchin. The process, which is not described in full, is reported not to require the removal of the pith.
Apart from the raw materials which have been mentioned, efforts are being made to step up the salvage of rags and waste paper. Li Fu-Chun, in his report on the first five-year plan, drew attention to the need for practicing strict economy and pointed to the gains which could be secured, independently of capacity increase, through more effective measures to reduce waste.
Little is known about China's supplies of other materials for pulp and paper-making, but it is reported that the old-established Yungli plant in Hopei province - a joint State and privately-owned enterprise - has been greatly expanded in recent years; this plant is the principal supplier of soda-ash to China's pulp and paper industry.
An energetic campaign to reduce illiteracy is being waged in China, and no doubt the language reforms (the introduction of simplified characters, and the declared intention to work towards phoneticizing the language) will accelerate progress.³ Rising literacy and advancing industrialization render certain a continued growth in the country's paper needs. Will the planned expansion succeed in satisfying these needs?
³ The five-year plan provides for the following percentage increases in enrolments by 1957 as compared with 1952 higher educational institutions, 127; senior middle schools, 178; junior middle schools, 79; primary schools, 18. The last figure implies that, by 1967, just over 60 million pupils, or 70 percent of the country's school-age children, will be attending primary schools.
It is difficult to say. Certainly China continues to import paper. Exports from Finland to China in 1955 totalled 22 thousand tons, including 9.5 thousand tons of newsprint, more than double the corresponding figure for 1954. China also imports smaller quantities from other European exporting countries, either directly or through Hong Kong. What is notable, however, is that China has already become an exporter of paper, notably of newsprint, on a by no means negligible scale. Thus newsprint exports (which it is understood are being shipped from the recently expanded Kwantung mill) figure in recent trade agreements with Ceylon, Burma and Indonesia. It is reported that total newsprint exports from China reached 32 thousand tons in 1955, against 4.5 thousand tons in 1954. The political and economic importance of this recent development will not be overlooked.
China, the birthplace of paper, is already second only to Japan among the world's producers outside Europe, North America and the U.S.S.R. Though domestic requirements are soaring, there is no doubt that the planning authorities are not oblivious to the rising needs of a paper-hungry Asia. The achievement of a substantial increase of output in the face of a serious lack of those papermaking materials traditional in the West, should not go unobserved.
J.C.W.
