Cultural and Creative Industries:New Engine for Economic Growth

来源 :CHINA TODAY | 被引量 : 0次 | 上传用户:sanshao
下载到本地 , 更方便阅读
声明 : 本文档内容版权归属内容提供方 , 如果您对本文有版权争议 , 可与客服联系进行内容授权或下架
论文部分内容阅读
  CULTURAL and creative industries (CCI) are regarded as a positive force in promoting consumption, international trade, and employment, and also for strengthening social cohesion. This is because the CCI feature strong industrial integration, high added value, and are environment-friendly. These emerging industries enjoy a rising status in the pattern of national economy, and will hopefully become a driving force for industrial upgrading, macroeconomic growth, and technological innovation.
   World Consensus
  When proceeding from global economic development, upon entering the post-industrial stage a country inevitably develops cultural and creative industries. This is proven by a glance at the history of many developed countries.
  One example is that of Great Britain in the 1990s. Having become mired in a manufacturing crisis, the British government carried out policies aimed at developing cultural and creative industries. The CCI sector soon became pivotal in revitalizing the economy, and helped to reduce unemployment. CCI are undoubtedly now a pillar of the British economy, accounting for as much as 8.2 percent of the country’s GDP, and employing 8 percent of the total workforce. Its creative product exports have been growing at a yearly rate of 11 percent.
  Germany, another big manufacturing country, also attaches great importance to cultural and creative industries. They have become increasingly prominent in its economic pattern as a whole since 2009. In 2012 the added value of the German CCI sector rose to £63.6 billion – 2.31 percent of GDP that year, and 10 percent higher than in 2009. The CCI’s contribution to national economic growth was still dwarfed by that of financial services, machinery manufacturing, and auto industry. But it nevertheless surpassed chemical and energy industries. In 2012, a total of 246,000 cultural and creative companies in Germany provided over a million positions, or sufficient for three percent of the entire working-age population.
   Promote China’s Economic Transformation
  In September 2009, the Cultural Industry Revitalization Plan, the first of its kind in China, was ratified. It signified the elevation of the cultural industry to a national strategic industry. According to the plan, China has given preference to the CCI sector, which includes cultural creativity and design, film and television production, publishing and distribution, performing arts and entertainment, cultural exhibitions, advertising, and the animation industry.   The recently unveiled 13th Five-Year Plan also emphasizes making CCI a pillar industry. It is indeed expected to become a new economic growth point, and a new engine to propel economic restructuring and industrial upgrading.
  Cultural and creative industries will indeed become a new growth point of China’s economy. As the global financial crisis seriously affected traditional industries such as finance and real estate, amid the resultant longterm economic stagnation, countries across the world have readjusted their economic development strategies and searched for new growth points.
  The CCI feature high industrial integration, soaring demand, and strong innovative capacity. They are thus perfectly in line with China’s goal, in the context of the“new normal,” of ensuring growth, expanding domestic demand, and promoting employment. Against this backdrop, the CCI sector has become a highlight of economic growth.
  According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the added value of China’s cultural and creative industries increased from RMB 1.1052 trillion in 2010 to RMB 2.7235 trillion in 2015, representing an expanded share in GDP from 2.75 percent to 3.82 percent. In terms of the growth rate, the CCI sector in China achieved 11 percent in 2015, higher than the macroeconomic level. That in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong accounts for more than 5 percent of local GDP. Cultural and creative industries have thus become a main impetus for promoting China’s economic growth and optimizing its structure.


  Cultural and creative industries have accelerated China’s economic restructuring. In the past three decades China made great economic and social achievements, with average annual growth of more than 10 percent. Against the backdrop of supply shortage, a comparatively low industrialization level, and cheaper labor costs, investments and exports were a main force in developing the economy, building the industrial system, and improving people’s livelihood.
  Along with the social and economic changes, however, the drawbacks to this economic pattern emerged. Excessive investment led to serious excess capacity in some sectors, resulting in low productivity and serious economic imbalances. The old industrial development pattern, featuring high energy consumption and hence high pollution, also had serious impact on the environment. Large-scale investment moreover increased government debts, and over-reliance on exports made the Chinese economy vulnerable to cyclical changes in the global economy.   The cultural and creative industries tally perfectly with China’s current demand to transform its economic growth mode and upgrade its industrial structure. They will therefore offset the drawbacks to the outdated extensive growth pattern.
  The main investment elements in the cultural and creative industries are intellectual resources and fruits; their dependence on material resources is lower. The green, low-carbon CCI sector thus has dual significance in modern economy. On the one hand, it is an important part of modern services, and on the other, it has a strong capacity for integration, penetration and radiation that can help to develop and upgrade relevant industries.
  In March 2014, the State Council promulgated the document elevating industries related to culture, innovation, and design and promoting their integration and upgrading. The document aims to speed up CCI’s fusion with other aspects of the economy, including manufacturing, construction, tourism, agriculture, and sports industry. In fact, these trends are now clearly apparent.
  The cultural and creative industries also help to expand the consumption scale and promote the consumption structure. China is embracing a new type of economic growth mode that focuses on domestic consumption, which it regards as a driving force for sustainable growth.
  A prosperous CCI sector will enlarge domestic demand and consumption. In its recent survey of 160,000 households in 31 provincial regions, the National Bureau of Statistics found that, in 2014, per capita consumption expenditure increased year-on-year by 9.6 percent (excluding price fluctuations), of which per capita expenditure on culture and entertainment showed an increase of 16.4 percent. Cultural expenditure thus achieved average growth of more than 12 percent from 2011 to 2014. Along with a rising per capita GDP and household disposable income, the proportion of cultural consumption will increase further, so once again optimizing the consumption structure.
   Provide Opportunities to the World
  The development of China’s CCI sector has resulted in a surge in manufacture and export of cultural and creative products. This has not only enriched global cultural markets, and boosted international economic growth, but also contributed to the diversity of world culture.
  In March 2016, UNESCO published a report entitled“The Globalisation of Cultural Trade: A Shift in Consumption – International Flows of Cultural Goods and Services 2004-2013.” It revealed that in 2013 China topped the world by exporting cultural products worth more than US $60 billion, accounting for 28.2 percent of total world exports in this sector, about twice that – US $27.9 billion– of the second country, the U.S. In the same year, China imported cultural products worth US $5.84 billion, about 3.5 percent of total world imports. (See Figure 1)
  The strong demand and potential for China’s cultural market constitute great opportunities for foreign companies. At present, China’s middle-income population is close to 300 million, a figure expected to double in a decade. People in the middle-income group are the main consumers of cultural and creative products due to their higher incomes and education levels. According to the China Cultural Consumption Index (2013), a report jointly released by the Ministry of Culture and Renmin University of China, the country’s potential cultural consumption that year reached RMB 4.7 trillion, while the actual level remained at RMB 1 trillion. Driven by strong demands and a series of policies, the cultural and creative industries are expected to become the new growth point in the context of the economic “new normal,” so bringing great opportunities for all cultural companies.
其他文献
THERE is a 3D printing lab in the First Ward Zone of the Department of Orthopedics at Peking University Third Hospital (PUTH). Although not big, it’s where Professor Liu Zhongjun, director of the depa
期刊
THE 11th Summit of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies concluded in Hangzhou on September 5, 2016. The G20 Leaders’ Communiqué, released after the meeting, stated that the participating countries ar
期刊
FOR millennia the Chinese farmed and lived according to the 24 solar terms of the lunar calendar, which were formed following long-term observation of the sun’s position in the zodiac.  The traditiona
期刊
IN an interview on July 20, 2016, French Ambassador to China Maurice Gourdault-Montagne shared his insights on such topics as the 2016 G20 Summit and Sino-French cooperation.  Since taking up his post
期刊
THE almost two-meter-high sculpture Liu Xiaofan admired at an exhibition, and which he assumed was bronze, turned out to have been made from recycled building waste. Liu immediately thought of the pil
期刊
IN July, more than 1,700 top AI experts gathered at the 25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJACI-16) in New York. A grand meeting for both AI researchers and practitioners
期刊
BEFORE moving to China, my favorite hideaway was Hawaii, so I was delighted to learn China has its own Hawaii – southernmost Hainan Province.  A Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 220) emperor established a mil
期刊
THE 2016 G20 Summit was successfully held in Hangzhou, China on September 4 and 5. This fruitful meeting has set the course for the world in such respects as economic growth, response to global challe
期刊
IN earlier times, mastery of music, Chinese chess, calligraphy, and painting attested to a Chinese scholar’s level of cultural accomplishment.  Music came top of the list, and that played on the guqin
期刊
A Concise History Reader of the People’s Republic of China is a condensed compilation by the Institute of Contemporary China Studies over 20 years from a multivolume collection. It is the first monume
期刊