History & Milestones

The Commercial Press is the longest-standing modern publishing house in China. Guided consistently by the principle of fostering cultural enhancement and intellectual enlightenment, its impact on the history of cultural and educational publishing in modern China has been profound and far-reaching.

The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd. is devoted to promoting cultural and educational enterprises in this new age of information. Building upon the foundation of both printed and digital formats, it will continue to advance, and actively pursue new developments towards greater diversification.

1897 The Commercial Press was founded in Shanghai as a print shop. 1902 Zhang Yuanji, an outstanding Chinese scholar at that time, joined the other founders of the printing press and set up an editorial and translation department, thus launched The Commercial Press’s publishing business. 1914 The Hong Kong branch of The Commercial Press was established initially as a retail business, and then gradually expanded by setting up a print shop as well as editorial and distribution departments. It has become a renowned publisher for languages, dictionaries/references, pictorial art books on Chinese history / culture and other subjects in its own right. 1917 Aside from publishing textbooks for Hong Kong schools, a complete set of textbooks for Southeast Asian schools was produced in the 1930’s. 1957 Began to pubulish textbooks for the 5-year syllabus in Hong Kong's Chinese Middle Schools. 1979 The Hong Kong Educational Publishing Company was established. It mainly publishes various textbooks and references for the Hong Kong and Macau school market. 1988 The Hong Kong branch was formally registered as The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd. 2004 Acquisition of Bloomsbury Books Limited. 2007 110th Anniversary of The Commercial Press 2011 The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd continues its success in publishing and retail businesses with 23 stores over Hong Kong and Macau. In addition to providing diverse titles, textbooks and reference materials, it has been actively developing digital publishing programmes. 2012 115th Anniversary of The Commercial Press

Our Business

The Publishing Business

The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd. is dedicated to promoting culture, enlightening education and vision. With a commitment to educational development, its publishing arm emphasizes on extensive searching and nurturing for new ideas. A wide variety of publications are produced including books on language learning, history and culture, social science, medical and health, psychological care, business and law, etc. In particular, dictionaries and language titles, as well as art and pictorial books on history and culture are the most popular and influential items.

To keep pace with the reading demand, we have published different categories of effective language learning tools to suit the needs of schools, families and business at all levels.

With a passionate concern for culture preservation, The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd. has accomplished many outstanding publishing projects in art & culture. Earlier volumes included "The Forbidden City", "Pictorial Encyclopedia of Chinese Medicinal Herbs Series"; and recent monumental achievements were "The Complete Collection of Dunhuang Grottoes"and "The Complete Collection of the Treasures of the Palace Museum". The purpose of undertaking these traditional classics are not only to record the past, but to also affirm our commitments in the Chinese culture for the future. By ways of devotedly exploring the value of history, through images and textual compilation, we pride ourselves on publishing comprehensive titles that cover contemporary Chinese history, Hong Kong history study, and humanity education. 

Based on new researches on history and archaeology, The Map of Chinese Regional Cultures has been a seminal title to illustrate the diversity of Chinese cultural origins. It has broken the dogma that Chinese culture was exclusively based on the Han culture. The Classical Chinese Literature in Exquisite Brushstrokes Series made use of the centuries-old and much prized Chinese calligraphy pieces to revisit the already forgotten classical writings in history, poetry and literature; all presented with images, artifacts and texts. The Selected Chinese Writing Series was a recreation and a new experience for the publication in the classics.

To meet the challenge of the ever-changing publishing environment, The Commercial Press(H.K.) Ltd. Has set up editorial/production teams in Shenzhen and Beijing to coordinate with colleagues in Hong Kong in areas ranging from manuscripts acquisition, production/design and marketing and sales. By doing so, we can market for the benefit of strengthening our home market in Hong Kong.

Retail Operations

The Commercial Press retail business holds "Bridging Books with Customers" all the way as its operating principle. Through brick and mortar bookstores and online platform, we aim at offering the best titles for every customer. At the same time, we are actively serving our readers from all over the world for the purpose of broadening their reading horizon.

Based on its comprehensive services and network, The Commercial Press has recently developed the Blooming Club specialty store targeting children, parents and teachers. Our large bookstores gradually bring in stylish stationery and educational products from Japan and Europe to meet our customer needs. On the other hand, The Commercial Press becomes the largest provider of textbooks and book fair services to secondary schools in Hong Kong. Also, we are supplying books to numerous local and overseas university libraries.

Along with the development of advanced technology, the reading pattern has been ever changing. However, the bookstore still plays an important role of nurturing culture in our society. In terms of categories, services and cultural activities, our retail bookstores are sustainably strengthening their professional services to cope with demands from a wide range of customers, so as to provide them with an exceptional reading experience.

The Commercial Press (H.K.) Ltd., which is the largest bookstore chain in Hong Kong, currently operates 22 branches in Hong Kong and one branch in Macau, providing a wide range of quality publications for its customers. In addition, its wholly-owned subsidiary, Bloomsbury Books Ltd. is one of the most renowned professional and legal bookshops in Hong Kong.

With the mission of "Bridging books with Customers", we import and source books directly from the US, the UK, the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan from publishers in order to cater to the needs of our customers so as to broaden their reading horizon.

Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co.

Established in 1979, The Hong Kong Educational Publishing Company (HKEP) is a textbook division of The Commercial Press. It is committed to 'the spirit of educational enlightenment', specifically for the promotion of a quality learning and cultural education. In these 30 years, we have been bringing innovations and genres of our publications, as well as publishing formats. Our publications are comprehensive, covering teaching and learning of arts, science and social science subjects, in both Chinese and English languages. Apart from textbooks, we also publish reference materials. We work on developing new projects to expand our product lines. In view of the trend in new media development and digital teaching and learning, HKEP has developed a series of e-learning platforms to promote personalized learning. HKEP today has become one of the most active and influential educational publishers in Hong Kong.

New publications for more diversified development

In the past 30 years, HKEP has been expanding its scope of publications with more diversified and innovative publishing ideas. Our textbooks target mainly secondary school students, covering subjects such as Chinese Language, Mathematics, Liberal Studies, Putonghua, Economics, Chinese History, World History and Chinese Literature. HKEP also publishes reference materials for primary up to senior secondary education. Our publications are comprehensive, in terms of category and subject. HKEP also works to promote academic and popular readings, publishing various series of reference books and academic books. In recent years, HKEP has been actively to developing English and primary school publications. Athens, a new brand specializing in ELT publications, was launched in 2010. Moreover, HKEP has become the sole distributor of Macmillan ELT publications. We endeavor to be a bilingual publisher of quality textbooks and supplementary teaching materials, across a wide range of academic disciplines for primary and secondary schools.