Op-Ed Contributors

Toward culture of quality

By Zhang Xiaoming (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-21 07:07

The Center for Cultural Studies (CCS) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently advocated that the cultural industry reform should, from now on, "pay equal attention to fostering market subject, as well as building the proper market environment".

To determine the scale of the country's cultural industry, CCS set up a "cultural industry statistical indicator system" with several related departments in 2005. By that time, the cultural industry's GDP was estimated to be 400-500 billion yuan. But even that figure didn't reflect the actual scale of the cultural industry, as revealed by a national economic census. And experts are in general agreement that the cultural industry's GDP increases by about 100 billion yuan a year.

So, CSS has now changed the statistical method, and does the calculation from the demand side. For the 2009 figure, it added Chinese people's yearly expenses on cultural activities, the Ministry of Culture's yearly public expenditure and the value of cultural products' exports to the cultural industry's GDP. The result, about 800 billion yuan, was similar to the result of the calculation done from the supply side.

But the cultural industry's economic benefits should not be limited to its GDP, for it plays a strategic role in propelling the growth of relevant industries. In today's digital age, the importance of software is greater than that of hardware. But for the variations in application programs, there would be no difference between iPhone and any other cellphone.

One theory of the game industry says that if you invest 1 yuan for the development of digital contents, it will stimulate a 9-yuan investment in relevant facilities. The annual report on China's Internet development shows industries using new digital technology, such as the game industry, are growing rapidly.

Apart from the digital-content industry related to the new media, the performance of the film industry (among other cultural sectors) has also been outstanding. The film industry has had a yearly economic growth rate of 30-40 percent, driven by the so-called "lipstick effect" since the global financial crisis, and has introduced private capital into its operation that has brought it great benefits.