During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, thematic publishing has received more comprehensive support at the policy level. The 14th Five-Year Plan for National Cultural Development has outlined clear and specific requirements for major projects of thematic publishing, while the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Publishing Industry has built a comprehensive guidance system for thematic publishing, encompassing content production, organizational guidance, and guarantee measures. Thematic publishing has also further consolidated its independent position in the selection of national fund projects and awards, leading to significant growth in quantity. The continuous enrichment of research outputs represented by projects, papers and books indicates that both theoretical research and practical development of thematic publishing during the 14th Five-Year Plan period have advanced in parallel. The industrial practices of thematic publishing have achieved both external expansion and internal structural fission, resulting in the emergence of numerous product branches with unique perspectives and creative content in the fields of politics, history, governance, science and technology, traditional culture, literature and children's literature. This has enhanced the scale of thematic publishing and the quality of selected topics. Based on a comprehensive analysis of publishing practices, this paper identifies six key characteristics of thematic publishing in the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, (1) continuous development of the scope of topic selection in a more detailed and in-depth direction; (2) a growing reliance on the independent planning capabilities of publishing units in addition to administrative power; (3) a shift in narrative methods from macro to micro and from theoretical to popular; (4) a publishing form emphasis on intelligence and interactivity; (5) functional focuses on combining publicity, guidance, and education with the dissemination of knowledge, inheritance of culture, and public service; (6) an expansion of readership from a narrow demographic to a broader, more diverse audience. In addressing the challenges and proposing solutions, this paper believes that thematic publishing in the "14th Five-Year Plan" period has several problems, such as the need to improve content creativity, the lack of refinement in business management model, and insufficient systematic academic research. Therefore, during the 15th Five-Year Plan, it is recommended that the competent authorities strengthen policy support for outstanding projects in macro-management, expand the benefits of thematic publishing projects, and stimulate the enthusiasm of all involved entities. At the micromanagement level, publishing units should focus on improving the content quality standards of thematic publishing, establishing internal mechanisms for topic selection cooperation and benefit sharing, as well as encouraging authors to produce content based on in-depth grassroots research, mastering real data around social realities, thereby making specific choices of publishing formats based on user needs. The academic community should deepen the theoretical research on thematic publishing to build a more explanatory and systematic knowledge framework, making it an important component of the theoretical system of publishing in Chinese.