The article Diffusion of Movable Type in Europe and Asia: Why were there Two Fates?  intends to investigate why moveable type technology was invented earlier in China and diffused faster in Europe through comparison in multiple factors.

 

According to the article, later users in China re-apply the moveable types for charitable and educational purposes, or just for personal fame, while western publishers are driven by profit to print more and sell more, which makes the users' motive a decisive factor that influences the technique's diffusion. Another strong point is the influence of linguistic characters. 150 types could be enough to print any literature work in alphabets, however, work in Chinese requires no less than 8000 types. Besides, the extremely high complexity of characters increases the cost to produce a set of Chinese types. The high randomness of character usage in Chinese also raises the cost of typesetting and printing. 

 

The author HE argued that Chinese inventors missed the small step to improve the type material and ink to spread movable type printing, but I will say, the Chinese language is just not a good match for the technique. Multiple facts support this observation. Seals, a kind of signature stamps similar to types, are used in China since Shang Dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC),  long before the moveable type printing was invented. Seals have a wide range of strong materials and are typically used with cinnabar paste, which is a kind of oily ink better for moveable type printing. But why Chinese people did not use seals and cinnabar paste to make printing? Well, just take a look at how complex the characters engraved on the seals are. I believe you will never want to make and arrange 10000 of them. : )​