I freely confess in this question that my knowledge of Oriental history is not as complete as that of Europe, though I am not completely in the dark. I am also aware that until the mid-XVIII century, China published more books than any other nation on Earth (though I do not know whether this is simply due to a larger population or not). Why is it that the Sung did not see a printing revolution of the sort Europe had for the same invention? Or did such a revolution occur that I am not aware of?
This question came to me and I am intrigued for an answer. I have a potential response or two (a non-alphabetic script made movable type nonetheless impractical) but I can only idly speculate without more knowledge and I fear I am wildly off. Has this forum an explanation?
There was a massive print explosion in the 10th century, which only continued at pace throughout the imperial period.
One of the fun things about the Song print revolution was the series of laments from manuscript culture's adherents about how no longer will readers cultivate deep reading and memory skills, due to the emergence of bound books. Fun, considering we are hearing similar outcries today as reading and recall skills are further eroded by the internet age.
EDIT: as per IamRooseBoltonAMA's request - for more full discussion of the elite's anxiety over the Song's exploding book culture, see Susan Cherniack, “Book Culture and Textual Transmission in Sung China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 54:1 (1994): 5-125; Stuart H. Sargent, “Contexts of the Sung Lyric in Sung Times: Communication Technology, Social Change, Morality,” in Voices of the Sung Lyric in China, ed. Pauline Yu (California, 1994), pp. 226-56.
as well as these two sources by Ron Egan -
“Resistance to Book Printing in Eleventh-century China.” Workshop on Early Book Printing in China. Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, April 24-26, 2005.
“宋代印刷出版所遭遇的阻力” (Song dynasty book printing and resistance to It). Museum of Asian Culture, Singapore. March 16, 2005.