Recently, the National Publishing Foundation has published the “Announcement of Appraised Results of the Funded Projects of National Publishing Foundation in 2022”, in which The Process of European Civilization(16 volumes), presided over by senior professor HOU Jianxin of Tianjin Normal University, was successfully selected. The Process of European Civilization(16 volumes) is being edited and published by the Commercial Press. It has been included in the of national key books’ publishing program of the 13th Five-Year Plan in 2018.

The Process of European Civilization(16 volumes) is the result of a major National Social Science Foundation project, of which Professor HOU Jianxin was the chief expert. It’s the first multi-volume work of European civilization written by Chinese scholars, enriches and deepens the nation’s overall knowledge of European civilization through different aspects. The project took more than ten years, it was started in 2008, officially approved as a major national social science bidding project in 2012, and successfully concluded in 2019. The research team of the project is based on the Institute of European Civilization of Tianjin Normal University. It has gathered the strengths of 12 universities and academic institutes at home and abord, including Peking University, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Nanjing University, Renmin University of China, Shandong University, Shandong Normal University, Zhejiang Normal University, East China Normal University, Sun Yat-sen University, Hebei University and the University of Birmingham. The main members are outstanding scholars in different fields of European history.

It is reported that more than 1,500 projects have been submitted to the National Publishing Foundation this year, and 498 projects have been awarded funding. The National Publishing Foundation was formally established in 2007 with the approval of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. After the Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Social Science Fund of China, the National Publishing Foundation is the third special fund which established in the name of the State. And it is given to works of top level in Chinese publishing field.