Owing to its supreme high quality and competitive pricing for medium to long-run assignments (few hundred to few million prints) , t radi t ional of fset pr int ing has enjoyed ever - lasting prosper i ty among broad and diversi f ied range of pr inting technologies, and becomes the mainstream in today’s printing ar ts and craf ts. Newspapers, books, per iodicals, teaching mater ials, posters, propagandize mater ials, and even the correspondences, cultural and stationery products familiar to offices �?most of them are printed by offset printing. Today, offset printing technology is very mature in Beijing, operation process is becoming simpl i f ied and per fect , labour supply of professionals engaged in the indust ry is abundant , the price performance of printing service in Beijing is never more competitive than before.
　　Within past 10 years, short-run (few hundred prints or below) and high-qual i ty pr int ing are gradual ly becoming popular, demand for personal ized adver t isement and promot ional materials has ever been increasing. The advantages of relative low cost of digital printing in short-run (for small print quantity) and variable data printing have made it widely and increasingly applied in office environment and digital printing centers.
　　In daily application of printing technologies, simply adopting ei ther t radi t ional of fset or digi tal pr int ing process may not necessarily be the optimal solution. Each of offset and digital printing has its own unique features, fully utilization of each individual advantages to realize hybrid printing may attain a better equilibrium point among the three aspects of print quality, variable content printing and integrated production cost.

Competitive Advantages of Costing for Digital Printing
Suitable for print volume between 1 �?1,000
Eliminate processes for film making, plate making and mounting,
collation & signature production
Reduce set-up and make-ready time between different jobs
Shorter turnaround time and higher job processing capability
Average print volume decreases while number of jobs increases
Jobs with print volume of 200-300 copies shift to fast print shops

Manual Jobs for Digital Printing
Despite fast print shops in Beijing are mostly equipped with competitive pre-press and digital printing equipment, as labour cost in China is still relatively more economical than adopting advanced finishing equipment, their collating, folding, binding and post-press works still rely very much on manual operations.