why did the volume of printed …

China was a major producer of printed material for a ling time because:
a. China had a well placed bureaucratic structure, whereby the civil servants were selected and recruited through examination system.
b. To cater to the examination , large amount of textbooks were printed and produced by the imperial state, With the increase in the civil service aspirants , there was a substantial increase in the printed books,
c. Increase trading activities, resulted in merchants collecting and circulating trade information.
d. Later, fictions, autobiographies, poetry also came to be published.
e. Women also became part of reading culture who began to publish their plays, poetry.
 f. Later , by the end of 19th century there was a shift to mechanical printing, with mechanical presses were imported to China.
g. Shanghai became the centre for printing.