Well, I suppose the real way to handle this question is to interrogate the premise. Compasses I can't really speak to, and gunpowder is something that is so complicated I would rather not get into, but at the very least we can say that the notion that the printing press was "unrevolutionary" in China is unequivocally false. Printing first definitively appeared in Tang Dynasty Sichuan, and sparked a revolution in letters much like its effect in Europe. This was not only in terms of literacy and the bare number of books, but also with wideranging cultural effects. Buddhism, for example, was often spread by the printed text, many of the earliest examples of which concern Budddhist stories and fables. One might even go so far as connecting the explosion of literature during the Song Dynasty, as well as the vast expansion of bureaucracy, with the development of printing.

This has actually been brought up several times before, but I'll link a bit on woodblock printing from /u/thanatos90 and /u/FraudianSlip. There is also an extensive section on the topic in Mark Edward Lewis' China's Cosmopolitan Empire.