Dye-transfer or imbibition printing (also known as IB) offered obvious benefits to the Chinese government, whose state-run film industry demanded large print runs, manufactured cheaply, to cover China’s vast geography. Research into a domestic Chinese dye-transfer operation began in 1958, when the government established a specialist research group dedicated to the problem at the Chinese Research Institute for Film Science and Technology (CRIFST) in Beijing (Huang, Miao & Zhang, 1981: p. 8). During the Cold War, as a result of the prevailing climate of Sino–Soviet collaboration, this research was largely based on Russian technical know-how. There were two types of Soviet dye-transfer technology that may have served as a basis for this process – one developed at the Leningrad State Optical Institute, the other developed by Pavel Mershin at Mosfilm in Moscow. Both Soviet technologies shared a distinctive characteristic with the Chinese process – the use of a transfer wheel, instead of a pinbelt (Cavendish, 2016; SMPTE, 1964). 

The first iteration of the Chinese process was a prototype named Dongfeng (“East Wind”), which was installed at the Shanghai Film Technology Plant in 1961. Soviet-supplied matrix materials enabled the experimental test printing of animated films shot at the Shanghai Animation Film Studio. The studio did not produce color separations in-camera, but instead used a chromogenic negative stock, which was later filtered to produce discrete color separations. With additional expertise from the Beijing Film Laboratory, the Shanghai Film Technology Plant printed ten copies of the origami animation Yike Dabaicai (A Big Chinese Leaf) in 1962 as part of these early experiments.

The following year CRIFST and the Shanghai Film Machinery Plant designed another prototype, the Huangpujiang II machine (named after a local river), which printed a small number of copies of the paper-cutout animation Yitiao Siyaodai (A Silk Belt). It is unclear how this machine differed from the Dongfeng prototype.

The gradual deterioration of relations during the Sino-Soviet split from the 1960s on, combined with the effects of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) forced the shutdown of CRIFST’s project – doubly condemned for its Soviet influence and perceived ties to the scientific elite. By 1968, under the direction of Jiang Qing (the wife of Chairman Mao), research into dye-transfer printing was transferred to two new teams: one comprising workers of the Beijing Film Laboratory (completely administered and controlled by the Chinese army since July 1967); the other, a cohort of chemical and dye manufacturers, alongside academics, based at the Shanghai Film Machinery Plant and Shanghai Photosensitive Material Plant. Baoding Film Stock plant manufactured blank and matrix stock to support these endeavors. 

During the early years of the Cultural Revolution, film production was largely, though not entirely, restricted to cinematic versions of the yangbanxi, or ‘revolutionary model stage works’ –ballets and operas, which were designed to spread Chairman Mao’s communist ideology across China. All yangbanxi featured vibrant color design and were most probably filmed using a combination of Agfacolor stock (imported from East Germany), illicitly imported American Eastmancolor, and Chinese daidaihong stock, manufactured by the Baoding Film Stock plant from 1971 (Pang, 2012; Dootson & Zhu, 2020). This catalyzed renewed interest in improving domestic IB printing. The “First Coordination Conference for the Dye-Transfer Process” was held on February 2, 1969, convening 87 members gleened from 32 institutions across the whole breadth of China. The research into dye-transfer was then escalated into the nationwide Ranyin Fa Dahuizhan (the “Great Pitched Battle for Dye-Transfer Process”). This Dahuizhan resulted in the installation of new, Chinese-made dye-imbibition machines in both Beijing and Shanghai during 1975 – these were used to mass-produce prints of yangbanxi films and some new films such as Huohong de niandai (The Fiery Years) (1974) (Huang, 1995; Shanghai Film Gazette, 1999). It is difficult to tell how different these machines were from earlier iterations, given the propagandistic nature and hyperbole of writing on film technology at the time, which emphasized constant advancement and national self-sufficiency. Later on, American visitors to the Shanghai facility noted the similarity of this equipment to Soviet processes (Samuelson, 1983). The fate of the process after this date is unknown.