Abstract

Given its origins as a borrowed concept from Western cultural policy discourse, creative industries has proven to be a surprisingly resilient idea in China. With its focus upon individual creativity, copyrighted products and global cultural markets, it clearly could not have taken root in China during the Maoist period, and it continues to coexist with a strong focus upon cultural control and the leading role of the Communist Party of China (CCP) in the shaping of national culture. The tension between creative industries as a policy discourse for cultural development and the notion that cultural institutions are under the close tutelage of the party-state has been a constant in China since the term was first introduced in the mid-2000s. It manifests itself in variations in terminology–most notably between ‘cultural industries’,‘cultural creative industries’ and, most recently,‘digital creative industries’–as well as in differing approaches taken at the levels of city and provincial governments and by the national government at different periods of time.
The pre-history of creative industries in China lies in the market reforms of the post-1978 period, and particularly the expectation that media and cultural institutions would become increasingly self-funding, through advertising, promotion and the development of cultural goods and services that would meet the demands of the fast-growing Chinese consumer economy. The processes of industrialisation, marketisation and urbanisation generated a virtuous circle for the media and cultural industries, which experienced considerable growth in the 1980s and 1990s. At the same time, they had to manage tensions between what …

Date

2019

Authors

Terry Flew, Xiang Ren, Yi Wang

Journal

A Research Agenda for Creative Industries

Pages

164

Publisher

Edward Elgar Publishing