Two reports published in the summer of last year show how difficult it is to predict exactly what direction the Chinese print industry is likely to go. In June, the Printing and Printing Equipment Industries of China (PEIAC) predicted an annual growth of 8% in the coming years.

Hosting a conference at Drupa, the organization pointed out some of the key areas including speed-to-market, digitizing and networking. Such growth is consistent with the levels over the past 10 years; Chinese print has been on the up by around 10% annually.

The PEIAC also pointed out that the annual turnover for the Chinese print industry was at £32.5bn in 2007 and employed 3.9m people with around 100,000 print companies.

But a report in July presented an interesting flip-side. A study by CIBC World Markets suggested that rising oil prices and wage inflation could result in China losing its edge in print exports. The cost of shipping a standard 40ft container from East Asia has tripled since 2001.

In the face of such obstacles, there is a school of thought that work may migrate back to the West. But this doesn't necessarily mean good news for the UK printers - those most likely to benefit will be printers in Eastern Europe.