On August 20-23, 2017, the 120 anniversary ceremony of the Commercial Press was held in Beijing Hotel Golden Hall. Established for 120 years, Yan Juanqi, the vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, as well as 300 scholars and representatives from the press and publishing all over the country attended the meeting. Prof. Chen Zhiqiang was invited to make a speech.
The Commercial Press was set up in Shanghai 120 years ago, which is the first modern publishing organization in China. Xia Ruifang and three of his friends soon received financial backing and began publishing books. In 1914, Xia attempted to buy out a Japanese company that had invested in the Commercial Press. Four days later he was assassinated. There was much speculation as to who was behind the assassination; no one was ever arrested for the crime.Commercial Press was bombed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the January 28 Incident. The bombing destroyed its headquarters in Zhabei, Shanghai, as well as the attached East Library and its collection of tens of thousands of rare books. At the turn of the century Commercial Press became a major publisher of textbooks. Today it is headquartered in Beijing and continues as an active publishing house of Chinese language learning materials including dictionaries, textbooks, pedagogical texts, and a cultural magazine called The World of Chinese.
