During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China's classical culture entered the stage of summarization. Its outstanding performance is that the court mobilized a lot of manpower and material resources to compile books and series such as Yongle Dadian, Integration of Ancient and Modern Books, Sikuquanshu and so on, and collected a large number of ancient books. The scale and accuracy of compilation are unprecedented not only in the cultural history of China, but also in the cultural history of the world.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it became a common practice to summarize and compile large-scale documents and reference books. Its cultural value and significance are:

First, it is of great significance for the preservation of cultural heritage to collect all kinds of works into a vast world of books.

Secondly, the group books are organized in a more accurate classification style to form a knowledge system in an orderly manner. For example, Sikuquanshu represents the highest level of knowledge classification in ancient China, and the four-part classification of classical and historical subsets has reached a very accurate and perfect level.

Third, the purpose of compiling large-scale literature reference books in Ming and Qing Dynasties was to serve the consolidation of absolute monarchy. This is different from the purpose of compiling encyclopedias in Europe during the Enlightenment. It is to promote rationalism, humanism and materialism and enlighten people's minds.