Founded in 1950, the People's Education Press (PEP) is a specialized publishing house directly under the leadership of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China. It undertakes overall tasks of researching, compiling, publishing, and distributing teaching materials for elementary education, and various other textbooks and educational books. The name of the press was inscribed by Mao Zedong. The first director of PEP was Ye Shengtao, a famous educationist in China.

For the past 50 years, according to the need of reform and development of national education undertakings, PEP has compiled and published 9 sets of teaching materials for primary and secondary schools in China, which are in common use nationwide, amounting to scores of billions of copies. More than one hundred titles have won awards in excellent book contest at the national and ministerial level.

The publications of the People's Education Press include:

Longitudinally, teaching materials for kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and higher teacher-training colleges;

Laterally, teaching materials for universal education, secondary teacher-training schools and teacher-training schools for pre-school education, vocational middle school, special education, adult secondary education, and elementary and middle school teacher training;

Subjects: from literae humaniores and social sciences to natural science and technology;

Categories: from textbooks, teaching references, to extracurricular books for students and books for teacher's in-service training;

Forms: from literal publications, hanging charts for teaching, to such audio-visual and electronic publications as slides, transparencies, tapes, video tapes, CD, VCD, LD and CD-ROM, etc.

The People's Education Press has a complete set of facilities, with more than 20 compiling sections of various subjects such as Chinese, Mathematics, and foreign languages, namely, the Curriculum and Teaching Materials Research Institute. In addition, it has editorial departments, a computer center and a library with a collection of more than 400 thousand books. Its subordinate enterprises include Beijing PEP Teaching Materials Center, People's Education Electronic & Audiovisual Press, PEP Printing Plant, and the Import and Export Corporation of China Educational Publications. The People's Education Press has become a publishing group which has gradually formed the operational structure with compiling and publishing of teaching materials and educational books as its central task, and with other supplementary businesses such as the publishing of paper books and electronic and audio-visual products, import and export of books, logistics service of relevant products, website construction, and internet publishing.