Today all major chinese medias published the news of the 3rd ‘Chinese Cultural Industries and City Branding international forum’ hosted by People’s University and Cultural industries department (of cultural bureau) in Beijing.
The most eye-catching news from this international forum is the announcement of a report by People’s University on ‘Chinese provinces and cities’ cultural industries development indicator (2011)’. It announced Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province as the top three provinces/cities based on 3 key indicators including productivity, impact, and capacity.
Productivity reflects on investment and production of cultural industries including cultural infrastructures, cultural capital and human resources (in cultural production). These three sub-indicators make up for the measurement of production capacity in cultural industries.
Impact measures the output of cultural industries including economic and social outcomes.
Capacity was based on a measurement of local and regional context that supports the development of cultural industries. It includes market environment, public infrastructures and innovation capacity.
Based on a combined result of the 3 key indicators, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province have ranked the top three.
Based on productivity, Beijing, Guangdong province and Shanghai are the top three.
Based on Impact, Jiangsu province, Zhejiang province and Beijing ranked the top three.
Based on Capacity, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province ranked the top three.
This research is based on the intensity and population variations which allows for the comparison among provinces and cities. The report draws a conclusion that economically advanced areas have the advantages in cultural industries development exemplified by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu heading at the top of the list (they are the top economic zones in China). The rest of provinces and cities in the top ten list have performed in 1 or a few areas listed as key indicators: Liaoning and Shandong perform better in productivity and Impact; Shanxi province outperformed the other provinces in productivity and capacity; Tianjin and Fujian performed well in terms of capacity too.
It has been a hot topic in china to measure cultural industries. This has been reflected in the desire of quantifying economic output of cultural industries and the competition among cities made worse by all the ranking reports produced by research centres in China, such as the ‘blue book’ of chinese cultural industries produced by Beijing Academy of Science and Technology (BAST). These documents and reports, blue book or another reflect the anxiety of the recent cultural rash in China affected by the 12th 5yrs plan in which cultural industries has been highlighted and promised to become the key economic driver for china by 2020.
From creative industries to cultural industries, China has toyed with the idea of cultural development for over a decade. The impact of these indicators, city rankings and rushing to be recognized at the international level (such as joining UNESCO city programme) is difficult to predict. But one thing is clear, China has not gone over the planned big economy approach when developing cultural industries that are made up of mainly small and scattered businesses. In this report, apart from social impact (which we don’t know exactly how it’s measured and quantified), the rest is unsurprisingly about economic performance, productivity and economic environment. This contradicts with the claim by the director of cultural bureau – that is, cultural development shall not be purely about commercialization. (see my other post)
Clearly, this message is interpreted at the local level as if it’s cultural affairs (state subsidized cultural sectors) it cannot operate in the market (note: this is a different scenario as to ‘because these industries have limited market prospect, hence we need to support them.’ In the Chinese context, these state subsidised sectors are not necessarily poorly performed in the market, it’s more to do with control and community development issues). Once under the belt of ‘cultural industries’, they have to make money and perform well in economic senses. I was once told by a university professor in China that ‘what’s the point of calling art industries if it is just about a few artists gather together and chatting to each other. we have to see them producing ‘objects’ and selling them to real ‘customers”. Such ‘hard’ economic thinking is not really out of context as the cultural market in China is still quite immature comparing with advanced cultural markets in UK and USA. At the advanced level such as chinese artists’ works sold at international auction houses, policy intervention is difficult and unnecessary. There are a whole other issues that could explain why this has been the case but I am not going to discuss them here. The real policy intervention happens at the level where there are very little ‘innovation’ involved. Here, innovation refers to the production of new concept and new ideas rather than about process innovation (which is often how innovation was understood in the Chinese context). Good examples include the support for animation parks to accommodate sub-contractors of Chinese animation firms located lower in the value chain (most of them are manufacturers for Japanese, Korean and USA animation studios).
There is no problem with taking advantage of the lower value chain. In fact, I am a believer of industrial strategy for cultural industries. However, the problem what I see in such a strategy in China is the overrepresentation of this low level industrial production and development strategy of cultural industries. It seems as if it is all about output without knowing where the output comes from and how it is related to other parts of the production (especially the ideas part).
Reports about indicators and rankings will stay popular until the Chinese government changes its strategy about developing the ‘big and hard’ economy. Nevertheless, I believe in the capacity of ‘cultural industries’ in challenging such approach by being lacking behind the assigned economic targets in the years to come. Question is what will happen to cultural industries, when that day comes?
