Report on China’s digital culture industry released
Yang Xiaodong, director of the Research Institute for Oriental Culture and Urban Development at the Development Research Center of the State Council, delivers a speech at a forum on the digital culture industry. Photo: SOHU
On Aug. 3, a report on China’s digital culture industry was released. It shows that the culture industry’s growth was double GDP growth from 2004 to 2017. In 2017, the digital culture industry’s value added reached about 1.03 to 1.19 trillion yuan and its gross output amounted to about 2.85 to 3.26 trillion yuan.
Li Peilin, a Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and director of the Academic Division of Social, Political and Legal Studies, said that the report is the successful result of the cooperation of governments, academia and enterprises. It has shown us the remarkable changes in the culture industry brought about by internet technologies, and it will promote the booming of the culture industry and its providing of better creative cultural products for the public, especially for young people.
Cheng Wu, vice president of Tencent Group, said that new forms of cultural creativity are a way to harness technology for the creation of a better life. The core of this idea lies in forming a positive cycle of products’ business value and cultural value creating more Chinese cultural symbols with global influence.
Yang Xiaodong, director of the Research Institute for Oriental Culture and Urban Development at the Development Research Center of the State Council, noted three characteristics of the digital culture industry in China. First, the industry is in a period in which new technologies are stimulating a new round of explosive growth. Second, the internet is transforming from consumption-oriented to industry-oriented. With the combining of the two orientations of the internet, the culture industry, the digital culture industry in particular, can fully leverage its leading role as a producer of services. Third, competition is expanding from domestic to global markets. The progress of the digital culture industry can improve not only Chinese culture’s competitiveness and influence but also China’s socioeconomic development.
Wang Lisheng, secretary of the Party Committee of the CPC of the Institute of Philosophy under CASS and director of the China National Center for Culture Studies at CASS, said that the remarkable changes and broad visions of economy, society and culture brought about by the digital technology revolution have drawn the attention of related academic institutions and government decision-making departments around the world. Many countries will prioritize the development of the digital culture industry. The digital culture industry is not only playing a significant role in satisfying people’s fast-growing demand for culture, but also transforming people’s attitude towards culture itself.
Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the China National Center for Culture Studies at CASS, said that digital technologies and internet technologies are combining to form a digital creative industry with the internet as its basis, data its key resource and high intelligentization its developmental orientation, and it will provide inspiration to economic, social and cultural development. As digital technologies entail more and more uncertainty, governments and enterprises have prioritized scientific forecasts and the management of that uncertainty.
edited by SU XUAN