During the second century, China began to produce writing paper with hemp or bark fibers. Later on, technological processes and equipment for papermaking were further developed.
Chinese paper and papermaking were first introduced to Vietnam and Korea and then from Korea to Japan.

In Korea, the production of paper began as early as the 6th century. Pulp was prepared from the fibers of hemp, rattan, mulberry, bamboo, rice straw, and seaweed. According to tradition, a Korean monk named Don-cho brought papermaking to Japan by sharing his knowledge at the Imperial Palace in approximately 610, sixty years after Buddhism was introduced in Japan.

The Japanese first used paper only for official records and documentation, but with the rise of Buddhism, demand for paper grew rapidly. Chinese papermakers also spread their craft into Central Asia and Persia (today's Iran), from which traders later introduced it into India.
The first recorded use of paper in Samarkand (in today's Uzbekistan) dates from a battle in Turkestan (a name formerly used for Central Asia), where skilled Chinese artisans were taken prisoner and forced to make paper for their captors.

From Samarkand, papermaking spread to Baghdad (Iraq) in the 8th century AD and into Damascus (Syria), Egypt, and Morocco by the 10th century. Many Chinese materials were not available to Middle Eastern papermakers, who instead used flax and other substitute fibers, as well as a human-powered trip hammer to prepare the pulp.

It took nearly 500 years for papermaking to reach Europe from Samarkand. Although the export of paper from the Middle East to the Byzantium Empire and other parts of Europe began in the 10th and 11th centuries, the craft was apparently not established in Spain and Italy until the 12th century.

Early paper was at first disfavored by the Christian world as a manifestation of Muslim culture, and a 1221 decree from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II declared all official documents written on paper to be invalid. The rise of the printing press in the mid 1400's, however, soon changed European attitudes toward paper.