15,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: China Today
- Sprache: Englisch
Creative industries in China provides a fresh account of China’s emerging commercial cultural sector. The author shows how developments in Chinese art, design and media industries are reflected in policy, in market activity, and grassroots participation.
Never has the attraction of being a media producer, an artist, or a designer in China been so enticing. National and regional governments offer financial incentives; consumption of cultural goods and services have increased; creative workers from Europe, North America and Asia are moving to Chinese cities; culture is increasingly positioned as a pillar industry.
But what does this mean for our understanding of Chinese society? Can culture be industrialised following the low-cost model of China’s manufacturing economy. Is the national government really committed to social liberalisation?
This engaging book is a valuable resource for students and scholars interested in social change in China. It draws on leading Chinese scholarship together with insights from global media studies, economic geography and cultural studies.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 347
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Map
Abbreviations
Figures and Tables
Chronology
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Changing Role of Cultural Work
The Art, Design, Media Trident
Chapter Outline
1: Culture in Flux
Changes in Cultural Management
The Policy Process
Cultural System Reform
The Cultural Industries
Cultural Security
Soft Power
Soft Power in Reverse?
Old Industries and New Revolutions
Concluding Remarks: Different Terms, Same Direction
2: Culture and Creativity
The Western Creativity Meme
Creativity in China
Historical Accounts of Creativity In China
The Journey to The West
The Journey from The West
Concluding Remarks: Towards A More Practical Definition
3: The Cultural Innovation Timeline
The Industrial Upgrading Turn in China
The Nature of Creative Work and Markets
The Trickle-Up Effect
Concluding Remarks
4: Desperately Seeking Innovation
Innovation Processes and Systems
Culture and Politics in the Mix
The Mediation of Things
Intellectual Property
Grassroots Innovation
Conclusion: Moving Up the Value Chain
5: Art
Art and History
Visual Art and the Industrial Imperative
Cultural Reconversion
The Impressions Series
Concluding Remarks
6: Design
Design: The Name of the Game
The Creative Class
Architecture and Urban Design: Historical Influences
Chinese Design and Soft Power
Creative Clusters
The Village in the City Revisited: Product Design
The Fashionable Identity of Shaoxing City
Concluding Remarks
7: Media
The Evolving Field of Media Industries
Policy
Market
Creative Communities
The Game Changes
Creative Destruction
Concluding Remarks: Re-Opening Pandora’s Box
References
Index
China Today
Creative Industries in China, Michael Keane
Urban China, Xuefei Ren
China’s Environmental Challenges, Judith Shapiro
Copyright © Michael Keane 2013
The right of Michael Keane to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2013 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
350 Main Street
Malden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6100-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6101-8(pb)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6960-1(Epub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6961-8(Mobi)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.politybooks.com
Abbreviations
CCP:
Chinese Communist Party
CCTV:
China Central Television
CPD:
Central Propaganda Department: also know as Central Publicity Department
CPPCC:
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
GAPP:
General Administration of Press and Publications
MIIT:
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
MoC:
Ministry of Culture
MoF:
Ministry of Finance
PRD:
Pearl River Delta
SAIC:
State Administration of Industry and Commerce
SARFT:
State Administration of Radio, Film and Television
UNCTAD:
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
WTO:
World Trade Organization
Figures and Tables
Figures
2.1Use of the term chuangyi in Chinese academic discourse4.1OECD conceptual framework for modelling innovation system4.2Industrial evolution in China4.3 Remodelling the regional cultural innovation system
Tables
1.1The reform of the cultural system1.2Creative goods and services: top 20 exporters worldwide, 2002 and 20083.1Added value of emerging industries in Beijing and proportion of local GDP3.2The cultural innovation timeline4.1Comparison of development logic in traditional and creative industries4.2 The shanzhai and post-shanzhai micro-creativity modelChronology
Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to my teachers at the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Adelaide: Hsu Chia-cheng, Silvia Chan, Andrew Watson, Carney Fisher and John Makeham, who led me up a wonderful garden path that would become my second life.
I would like to express gratitude to Elaine Zhao, Bonnie Liu, Sampsung Shi, Joy Zhang and Irene Ma for their assistance in research and in clarifying sources of information. Tim Lindgren was a great sounding board and inspiration for many of the ideas. My colleagues at QUT, who are too numerous to mention, are also contributors. I want to pay special thanks to Stuart Cunningham, Terry Flew, Greg Hearn, John Banks, Jean Burgess, Luke Jaaniste, Vijay Anand, Lucy Montgomery, John Hartley (now at Curtin University) and Jason Potts (now at RMIT). Thanks also to Guo Yong, Dai Juncheng and Yang Yongzhong, visiting scholars from Xian, Beijing and Chengdu respectively. I want to express my thanks to Wen Wen, Henry Li (Li Siling) and Angela Huang (Huang Lin), and Siti Isa, recent PhD graduates from our centre for their various suggestions, insights, clarifications and provocations. Many other people have contributed to my ideas over time, although I need to clarify that the final interpretations of such ideas, including mistakes are mine. I would especially like to acknowledge colleagues and friends John Howkins, Paul Owens, Jing Wang, Wanning Sun, Jane Zheng, Zhang Xiaoming, Lhamo Yeshi, Hui Ming, Zhang Jingcheng, Jin Yuanpu, Marina Guo, Bert de Muynck, Mónica Carriço, Michael Ulfstjerne, Wu Huan, Stephanie Donald, Justin O’Connor, Brian Yecies, Ae-Gyung Shim, Anthony Fung, Xin Xin, Doobo Shim, See Kam Tan and Ben Goldsmith. Thanks also to the anonymous readers of the manuscript who identified weaknesses and areas of improvement. Finally, I wish to thank the commissioning editor at Polity, Lauren Mulholland, as well as editorial and production personnel, Elen Griffiths, Neil de Cort and Ian Tuttle for their expertise in bringing this project to timely completion.
Introduction
In 2000, the New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell (2000) popularized the idea of a ‘tipping point’. Gladwell describes how ideas move through populations, virus-like, often defying logical explanation. Some ideas are successful because they are ground-breaking; but many gain momentum in different ways, through different channels. A tipping point can occur as a result of a fad; for instance, the viral effects of online social networks. Alternatively, a tipping point occurs because social environments are in a state of readiness; that is, an idea, fad or innovation falls on already fertile ground.
This book concerns a tipping point, a moment of critical mass. The idea that creativity is essential for the renewal of Chinese society is now widely accepted; for some it has become a rallying call for nationalism; for others, a catalyst for institutional reform. Major events such as the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo have showcased China’s creative accomplishments, which the national government promotes as ‘cultural soft power’. Annual festivals, including the Beijing International Cultural and Creative Industries Expo, the Shenzhen Cultural Industries Expo and the Shanghai Creative Industries Activities Week attract entrepreneurs, investors, academics, policy makers, spectators and practitioners. Long regarded as trouble makers, artists are rewarded for their contributions to the national soft power campaign. Film celebrities such Zhang Ziyi and Jackie Chan (Cheng Long) present a brand-new image of China to the world’s audiences, while high-profile dissidents like Ai Weiwei and Liu Xiaobo remind the world that the new branding has some way to go. The construction of hundreds of creative clusters, parks, bases, zones, precincts and incubators, often situated around the fringes of cities, provide spaces to work and opportunities for exhibition, production and interactive learning.
This book traces pathways that have made creativity a mainstream concern in China today. In late 2003, a small forum was convened in Brisbane at the Queensland University of Technology on the future of the creative industries ‘movement’ globally and the implications for China.1 The US-based scholar Jing Wang’s comments at that event caught my attention (J. Wang 2004). Her remarks were noteworthy not because of scepticism, which was to be anticipated, but because she highlighted that the ‘least problematic’ idea in a western liberal democracy, that of ‘creativity’, might be the most problematic in China.
Ten years later, the problem of creativity remains. But creativity is harmonized, stripped of profane elements, and turned into economy. It is accorded a supporting role at the high altar of soft power. Culture too is increasingly secularized and industrialized. Its products are endless: films, paintings, carpets, souvenirs, theme parks, ceramics, books, magazines, acrobatic troupes, minority dances, operas, cartoons, fashion garments, buildings, malls, precincts, video games, CDs, advertisements, toys, furniture . . . the list goes on. Scholars in China compete to list, index and compare provincial, municipal and district outputs.
How did this come about and what does it mean?
In this book I argue that Chinese culture has reached a point of change, unparalleled since the first decade of the twentieth century when the New Culture Movement generated a series of external shocks to the Confucian imperial system. In today’s globalized and interconnected world, many outside China believe that the power of international ideas will eventually make China more like the rest of the world, either gradually, a ‘silent transformation’ (see Jullien 2011), or through some form of anti-government revolution. One such global idea is liberal democracy. The online communications revolution beginning in the 1990s provided an opportunity for the world to break through barriers: the trickle of international ideas that navigated past the barriers rapidly turned into a stream of pop culture; as Chua Beng-Huat notes, most of this emanated from East Asia (Chua 2012). When China moved to join the World Trade Organization in that decade, the US entertainment industry began to prepare for an assault in anticipation of market liberalization. Jack Valenti, then head of the Motion Pictures Association of America commented:
Trade is much more than goods and services. It’s an exchange of ideas. Ideas go where armies cannot venture. The result of idea exchange as well as trade is always the collapse of barriers between nations (Valenti 2000).
The Chinese leadership, which had constructed barriers, needed an industrial force to combat the so-called ‘Hollywood wolves’. China joined the WTO in December 2001. In that year, policy leaders had agreed on the term ‘cultural industries’ (wenhua chanye文化产业). Within a few years an international term, the ‘creative industries’ (chuangyi chanye创意产业) had gained momentum, mainly among actors looking to evade the dogmatic strictures of state cultural policy.
Despite a belief that the creative industries in China were an alternative to the more political and highly regulated cultural industries, they would eventually come to represent an ideological position, reminding conservatives of the danger of ‘peaceful evolution’, the viewpoint expressed by John Dulles, US Secretary of State in the 1950s, that democratization comes gradually rather than suddenly. In a political system that views culture as a public resource, the momentum of market forces raises issues of ‘national cultural security’ (guojia wenhua anquan国家文化安全).
The key themes that inform the discussion of Creative Industries in China are as follows:
Tensions are continuing to play out between political culture and commercial creativity in China.Policy makers, academics and even many ordinary citizens hope that the nation will become a ‘creative nation’ rather than a producer of cheap imitative products shipped to overseas markets.The cultural and creative industries are viewed by many Chinese scholars as the means by which China will radiate its ‘soft power’ to the world.In addressing these issues, I move beyond the conventional disciplinary boundaries of media and cultural studies. Media (and communication) studies research on China has to a large extent focused on ideological representations. As a consequence, a large number of books, articles and PhD dissertations follow a similar route. In expanding the map, I draw on insights from economic and cultural geography. I also venture into philosophical issues that are probably best left to sinologists. My attempts to dig at some of the cultural foundations of creativity run the risk of finding other holes, in turn raising more difficult questions. If that is the case, then I will have achieved some measure of success.
The Changing Role of Cultural Work
Much is at stake in China’s initiatives to industrialize its culture. In order to understand what the industrialization of culture portends, consider occupational choices now available to graduates of universities and training institutions in China. Demand is particularly high for ‘cultural planners’ – people with a tertiary degree in economics, arts administration and urban planning. So lucrative has this field become in recent years that many cultural planners and ‘cultural intermediaries’ come from fine arts, animation, design, IT and photography backgrounds. Other growing industries that are attracting a new breed of skilled workers are video games and interactive web design. To this list we can add ancillary occupations surrounding film and television such as special effects, set construction, media management and marketing.
Compare these choices to the 1980s and early 1990s. People who produced movies, wrote TV drama screenplays and news stories, and performed theatrical works were employees of the state. Their work may well have been gratifying, and at times exciting, but state cultural workers (wenhua gongzuo zhe文化工作者) did not countenance the idea of a having a career in an ‘industry’. Working inside a propaganda unit was a secure job; that is until the mid-1990s when the state began to turn many of its media and cultural institutions (shiye事业) into industries (chanye产业).
Industrialization is not just a phase of development of the late twentieth century in China. In the early decades of the century, import statistics were used as shock tactics to remind Chinese people of the ‘threat’ of foreign products. Prior to the Communist revolution, successful industrial entrepreneurs were lauded as patriots (Gerth 2003). Today the focus has changed somewhat: the national government has campaigns to generate ‘soft power’, to stimulate exports; it protects domestic cultural sectors from international competition, in the process preventing them from being truly internationally competitive; in justifying its interventions, the national government talks a great deal about the importance of creativity and innovation. In the past few years coinciding with the release of the 12th Five Year Economic and Social Development Plan, the focus has turned to the integration of technological innovation and cultural creativity (see Li 2011).
In modern Chinese, four characters are used to describe industry (ye业): these are shi事, gong工, chan产 and qi企. Broadly speaking, shiye refers to state institutions; gongye highlights the centrality of manual labour; chanye indicates productivity; while qiye illustrates the idea of enterprise.
The slogan ‘from Made in China to created in China’ has become a rallying call for reform. However, it is not a case of simply moving from manufacturing to creative services, from factory to studio or from public culture to commercial enterprise. The reality is more akin to an integration of ‘made’ and ‘created in China’. The focus of reform is ‘upgrading’ (shengji升级) and ‘transforming’ (zhuanxing转型). Work practices, routines and forms of market organization from the industrial economy have been transferred into the cultural field. Because of the emphasis on the upgrading of industries, the focus of policy in China is heavily skewed towards providing infrastructure. Local and district governments have followed the national party line and attempted to ‘construct’ (jianshe建设) new eco-friendly industries by providing assistance for the redevelopment of industrial districts and dispensing incentives to attract ‘talent’ (rencai人才). The cultural and creative industries in China are invariably conceptualized as ‘clusters’, drawing on a tradition of collective management of labour and built environment as well as a legacy of close supervision of cultural workers. The ‘tangible’ bottom line is economy, described as ‘attracting business’ (zhao shang招商); the solution to the problems of underperforming structural assets, according to some critics, is in the intangible realm: to ‘attract creativity’ (zhao chuang招创).
The Art, Design, Media Trident
A great deal of category confusion surrounds ‘creative industries’: what they are, what is included; and what is not included. The creative industries are an international concept constructed in Britain in the late 1990s; the term reached China in 2004, three years after the state had ordained the ‘cultural industries’. Accordingly, most national policy documents privilege the cultural industries (wenhua chanye文化产业). The distinction between culture and creativity has political implications: does China ‘join the international track’ (yu guoji jiegui与国际接轨) or does it maintain its cultural sovereignty?
I provide the reader with some of the main debates over definitions of creativity and creative industries in China as well as interpretations in East Asia and developing countries. In order to avoid confusion, I have opted for a relatively straightforward categorization of art, design and media. These three clusters of activity illustrate the greatest international momentum within China. The first use of these categories came in a report for the Research Council of the National Academies in the US, Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity (Mitchell et al. 2003: 19).2 The authors identified the trident: arts, electronic and new media and design-related activities. In the report, art constitutes the visual arts, performing arts, literature and publishing, photography, crafts, libraries, museums, galleries, archives, heritage sites and arts festivals; electronic and new media includes broadcast, film and television, recorded music, software and digital media; while design-related activities are represented by architecture, interior and landscape design, fashion, graphics and communication design and product design. Interestingly, the Beyond Productivity report also used another term that is central to China’s creative aspirations. This is soft power.
In a progressively interdependent world where culture tempers and inflames politics as well as markets, strong creative industries are a strategic asset to a nation; the predominance of Hollywood movies; Japanese video games, and Swiss administration of FIFA soccer are forms of soft power that have global, albeit subtle, effects, particularly in countries whose bulging youth populations have access to television and the Internet. (Mitchell et al. 2003: 21)
Beginning our discussion with art is important. Art and culture have been contested and politicized fields in China over the past several decades. Art draws together traditional forms such as visual and performing arts as well as local opera, contemporary oil painting, dance, theatre and musical performances. These pursuits can be practised by all people; for instance, the popularity of amateur performers in parks and gardens. But when art becomes a commodity form, it has the potential to accrue value. The main focus of policy is to convert cultural resources into economic capital. This is a great challenge for China.
The second part of the trident represents the commercial application of creativity. Many design practices convey a sense of process. Designed products usually exist because clients provide a brief. While design is driven by technical skill, ‘innovative’ design depends on ‘close intellectual alliances with visual and other artists’ (Mitchell et al. 2003: 8). Many aspects of design make good use of software programs to aid and accelerate the process of thinking creatively. Computer-aided design, for instance, allows the designer to input specifications and data: in effect the computer provides solutions that may not have been imaginable. Good design is a source of competitive advantage. In China, the most rapidly expanding design sector is urban planning.
The third part of the trident is media. One way of conceptualizing media is ‘platforms’; that is, the technological means of disseminating ideas and representations. Media channels provide the means for cultural goods, for instance, a musical performance, to achieve publicity, or to be embedded in another format, such as film scores. In the understanding of media in this book, however, the medium is also the message, recalling Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum (1967). The media industries are therefore the key soft power industries: they produce textual representations that in many cases travel across cultural borders; they provide celebrities that are linked by association to national cultures; furthermore, they seek out novelty and use formats to produce complex cultural goods that can be widely distributed. In this respect, the media are the most complex of the three categories.
The focus on art, design and media activities shows how creativity is changing China, to use the title of a recently published book (Li 2011). The introduction of design into the field of cultural research enriches understanding of China’s emergence. Commodity production is labour intensive and China has excelled in the production of unbranded components for global production chains. Branded goods production requires the addition of design: branded goods are therefore design-intensive (Lash and Lury 2007).
Chapter Outline
Chapter 1 examines how cultural policy is formulated in China. I look at the reform of the Chinese cultural system, and the parallel themes of ‘cultural security’ (wenhua anquan文化安全) and ‘soft power’ (ruan shili软实力). I then consider distinctions between the state’s advocacy of cultural industries and the foreign interlopers – the ‘creative industries’ and the ‘creative economy’. I provide a brief discussion of the origins of these concepts and their international uptake.
In chapter 2, I examine tensions between culture and creativity in China. This chapter is important if we are to understand political implications of the creative industries in China and why the ‘uses of creativity’ are contested among China’s policy leaders and scholars. In most studies to date, the ontological and epistemological basis of creativity is assumed to be Western in origin. I explore the origins of creativity in Western society as well as interpretations of culture, creativity and innovation in ancient and modern China. The question I return to in this chapter is: why is creativity still such a ‘thorny question’ in China?
In chapter 3, I introduce the concept of a ‘cultural innovation timeline’. This timeline is taken up in the following chapters on innovation, art, design and media. The timeline is an ecological model, demonstrating the evolution of cultural markets and the decisions that actors make in entering into the market. The timeline shows that while many of China’s arts, media, design and cultural businesses are moving up the value chain, most policies are still directed at low-value segments. The six levels of the timeline are: standardized production, imitation, collaboration, clusters, trade and creative communities.
Chapter 4 takes up the topic of intellectual property and innovation. I look at China’s attempts to transform into an innovative nation by 2020. I investigate similarities between technological innovation and cultural creativity. I conclude with a discussion of how open innovation models are evolving due to China’s loose intellectual property laws and even looser enforcement. The examples are drawn from micro-production communities in south China, often referred to as shanzhai producers.
In chapter 5, I focus on art markets in China, past and present, including the transfer of international ideas, styles and genres. I examine the often problematic relationship between politics and art in modern China and the re-counselling of this relationship due to the government’s soft power rhetoric. I examine three examples of art practice and ask how they have been rehabilitated, repacked and represented to Chinese and international markets. The first example is visual art, arguably the success story of China’s contemporary creative renaissance. I look at the divide between original art and what many call ‘copy art’. The second example, kunqu, is the most highly refined and literary genre of traditional Chinese theatre. I show how practitioners are attempting to revitalize this ancient art form and make it more relevant. Finally, the discussion turns to the Impressions series of outdoor scenic spectaculars choreographed and directed by Zhang Yimou, best known for his cinematic output.
Chapter 6 explains why design is the key driver of China’s creative industries. I describe the evolution of China’s design industries, its educational institutions, and the problems inherent in outsourcing and fee for service work. I introduce the concept of the ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) to illustrate how competition for talent is driving a boom in urban design. The creative class idea is built on the concept of indexing various components of urban life, described by Florida as the 3 Ts: technology, tolerance and talent. I look at examples of the design of creative spaces, primarily reconverted factories. In the final section, I show how urban planning is integrated into the fashion industry in the city of Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province.
Chapter 7 begins with a discussion of how China’s state media became media industries. The chapter serves a particular purpose; that is, to show how media industries are linked to China’s soft power aspirations. The soft power of Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and to some extent Taiwan has made inroads into China, reminding Chinese audiences that the nation’s own content is uncompetitive and excessively formulaic. I draw together data to show how China’s film, TV and animation sectors are faring, and how they are responding to the challenge of internationalization. Does China aim for the global market where the stakes are high or try to gain respect for its creative output in Asian markets, in the same way that South Korea has done in the past decade? In the final section of this chapter, I turn to networked creative communities. I suggest that if the government wants to really have a creative nation, it needs to understand these communities rather than be threatened by them.
Notes
1 The forum participants were myself, John Hartley, Stuart Cunningham, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Terry Flew, Christina Spurgeon and Jo Tacchi from QUT, Kate Oakley, Nick Couldry, Toby Miller, Jing Wang and William Uricchio.
2 The Beyond Productivity categorization mirrors the ‘three clusters’ of Singaporean policy making: ‘arts and culture’ (Renaissance City 2.0), ‘design’ (Design Singapore) and ‘media’ (Media 21) (Kong 2008) and a similar three-sector model adopted in the Netherlands (Our Creative Potential 2005). See http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten-en-publicaties/rapporten/2009/08/26/our-creative-potential-paper-on-culture-and-economy.html.
1
Culture in Flux
The state’s management of the economy in the People’s Republic of China has been a remarkable success. Division of labour, combined with a propensity for collective organization, have generated unprecedented returns. China’s development model has taken it from third world to economic superpower status. However, this model, sometimes described pejoratively as the ‘world factory’, is under increasing pressure both internationally and domestically. The factory system continues to pollute the environment and draw workers into exploitative and unsafe work environments (Ross 2006; Chang L. 2008). China is seeking to transform its model.
Over the past few decades rapid urbanization has changed the demographic pattern of Chinese society. One study estimates China will have 219 cities of over one million inhabitants by 2025 (McKinsey 2009). Migration to cities has led to increasing social fragmentation. Migrant labourers find employment in urban construction projects; many offer housekeeping (baomu保姆) duties for urban residents or work in the thousands of massage parlours that prolifferate in cities. The relative affluence of middle-class city dwellers even precipitated a policy directive in 2006 called the ‘new socialist countryside’ (xin shehuizhuyi nongcun新社会主义农村), which was intended to redress imbalances between urban and rural populations.1
The gap between city and country is most evident in consumption practices. Affluent classes in China’s large cities have welcomed international brands. In a study of Chinese consumer society, Karl Gerth (2010) describes how wealthy urban elites yearn after brands like Armani, Prada and Calvin Klein. Meanwhile the less well-off and many young consumers opt for knock-offs produced in small factories, often in southern China.
This chapter looks at the transition from hard to soft industries, from the manufacturing to the service economy. Underscoring this transition is the reform of the cultural system (wenhua tizhi gaige文化体制改革) and the roll out of cultural industry development policies. In 2011, China’s Minister of Culture, Cai Wu, announced that cultural industries would become ‘pillar industries’ (zhizhu chanye支柱产业), and would contribute as much as 5 per cent of GDP by 2016 (the estimated value in 2010 was 2.78 per cent; Xinhua 2011). The fact that culture, formerly the domain of ideological representation, has become an industry is significant for how we understand China’s political transformation. For this reason the chapter begins by examining how cultural policy is produced in China. I show how reform of the ‘cultural system’ has led to the hegemony of the ‘cultural industries’ (wenhua chanye文化产业), in effect superseding publicly funded cultural institutions (wenhua shiye文化事业). I examine the key political discourses of soft power and cultural security. In order to place these developments in an international context, I consider contemporary uses of ‘industry’ and survey other contending formulations, namely ‘culture industry’, ‘creative industries’ and ‘creative economy’. I show how these different terms have been adopted in China as well as other parts of Asia.
Changes in Cultural Management
The reform of the cultural system in China is best illustrated by a widening of commercial forms of management and financing: these commercial forms are already dominant in broadcasting, advertising, design and digital media sectors. While commercial success drives the operations of many businesses, we need to bear in mind that China remains an authoritarian one-party state. Despite growing emphasis on audience ratings, profits and public share holdings, the policies underpinning China’s cultural and creative industries are far from what constitutes a free market in liberal democracies. Furthermore, institutions that govern market behaviour in China cannot be regarded as transparent.
A number of scholars have applied the term ‘neo-liberalism’ to China. Neo-liberalism’s global impetus was significant in the 1990s and early 2000s, although as a model of economic governance it has suffered in the wake of the global financial crisis. In China the need to adapt Marxism to globalization entailed trading collective welfare rights, such as pensions and health care, for the private benefits of capitalism, including home ownership and social mobility.
However, what neo-liberalism represents in China’s media and cultural sectors remains unclear. Sometimes described as Reaganism, Thatcherism or the Washington Consensus, neo-liberalism made inroads into Chinese policy think tanks during the 1990s (Wang H. 2003). According to Gamble (2006) the concept has two principle strands: a laissez-faire strand maintains that the market should have few impediments; that is, government should get out of the way; the second, a ‘social’ strand, maintains that government should be active in creating good market institutions; for instance, financial regulations and intellectual property regimes.
John Quiggan, a vocal critic of market fundamentalism, says that neo-liberalism is used primarily by academics, usually in an ideological sense (Quiggan 2012: 3). He proposes a more neutral term, ‘market liberalism’. Quiggan observes that political elites and business professionals, ‘who don’t see themselves acting ideologically’, react with some hostility when such labels are pinned on them (Quiggan 2012: 3). In China, Wang Hui epitomizes the academic ‘new left’ position. Wang attaches the label neo-liberalism (xin ziyou zhuyi新自由主义) to those who view the market as the arbiter of economic and social reform (Wang H. 2003). Wang maintains that the state and neo-liberalism exist in a complex relationship of co-dependence; surprisingly, he draws close parallels between laissez-faire neo-liberals and hard-line neo-conservatives, the latter using the market and international trade rules to pursue statist agendas.
On this issue, Breslin (2006: 116) remarks: ‘while the Chinese economy is far from totally liberal, its increasingly liberal form stands in strong contrast to a high illiberal political structure.’ Authoritarian elites have demonstrated a willingness to adopt and adapt neo-liberal strategies to generate growth. The media scholar Haiqing Yu speaks of a hybrid political structure in China that is ‘non-liberal, anti-liberal and neoliberal, all in one’ (Yu 2011: 34), noting that the concept is ‘always hard to pin down, and there is a lack of connection between rhetoric/definition and reality’ (38). She notes neo-liberalism underpinning commercialization of China’s media and the entry of transnational media (38). Elsewhere, Hong Yu, writing about vocational education for rural migrants, argues that neo-liberalism continued to play a strong role even after the Hu Jintao regime moved to rectify social tensions by launching the slogan ‘harmonious society’ (Yu 2010: 313).
Yuezhi Zhao (2008) has characterized neo-liberalism in regard to commercialization of television programming, noting an increase in content catering to urban audience tastes and a corresponding decrease in rural topics. Of course, this is an inevitable feature of all global television systems: urban stories rate better than stories about poverty and struggle. Zhao notes the commercialization of media in China taking place against a backdrop of privatization of state-owned enterprises, the seizure of farmlands and the commodification of a wide range of cultural forms.
Undoubtedly, the state’s accommodation of ‘market liberalism’ has allowed many would-be entrepreneurs to exploit vulnerable communities. Acquisition of land has occurred without representation. People were, and continue to be, forcefully relocated. However, the fact that people are displaced without adequate consultation or legal representation has much to do with local government’s propensity for increased tax revenues. It is another thing to assert that an ideological commitment to unregulated markets and the rational self-interested behaviour of agents alone is driving such processes. The reality is more akin to comprador capitalism, clientelism and embedded rent-seeking.
A more significant issue is ‘delocalization’, that is, the shifting of foreign enterprises to China (see chapter 3) (Napoleoni 2011). Foreign direct investment from international businesses in China’s special economic zones has provided economic growth. Yet what is transpiring in economic zones is different from market liberalism. Napoleoni contrasts the kind of ‘state capitalism’ practised in China to the neo-liberal shock therapies forced upon other developing nations (Napoleoni 2011: 81–91). Other authors, including Halper (2010) and Ramo (2004), have used the term ‘Beijing Consensus’ to differentiate the ‘Chinese model’. Even though China attracts massive amounts of foreign investment, the state has not retracted from its role in directing the market. Donald Nonini (2008) argues that while subcontracting and vertically disaggregated network organizations of supply-chain production in parts of China are evidence of complicated power relationships between Chinese actors and foreign enterprises, this is not a case of capital simply determining the conditions of existence.
Despite its application to aspects of creative industries policy in already ‘open markets’,2 neo-liberalism remains a problematic approach in China. Definitional ambiguity, combined with a government predilection for intervention, make it ill suited to describe China’s media and cultural sectors. Many accounts simply collapse state power into market power, in the process bracketing off the crucial question of how the state intervenes to suppress creative expression. Laikwan Pang’s account of the ‘creative economy’ presents a critical account of neo-liberalism in China. She argues the case with reference to Mao Zedong’s cultural policies: ‘what is lost in this creative economy is not only the traditional Chinese and socialist sense of cultural sharing, but also a political sensitivity to culture’ (Pang 2012: 16). Pang argues that local cultures have been ‘depoliticized’ in the ‘economisation of local ethnic culture whose enormous political potential is depleted by the overall neo-liberal drive’ (109); the point here is that local cultural elites are presumably moving away from ideology in the interest of profit; elsewhere, however, Pang recognizes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to maintain ‘direct centralised control over the cultural scene’.
However, the fact that local governments might be wishing to downplay ideology is itself evidence of increased autonomy vis-à-vis the centre; this autonomy echoes the relational nature of regional development (Sun 2010a). The issue of whether autonomy is weakening ethnic cultures is a harder argument to mount; local autonomy has in many instances (see chapter 5) strengthened local cultural traditions and has led to a greater number of translocal linkages and connections (Oakes and Schein 2006). Local autonomy can also be a means by which actors can make effective representations to the centre through local communicative networks.
Market liberalism is a model of statecraft in which state interference is inimical to successful markets. If we consider choices available to agents in cultural and media markets in China, it is clear that the state still plays a strong determining role. The Chinese state intervenes in media and cultural markets on a number of levels, over and above creating institutional frameworks. The central state determines the parameters of policy and planning; it sets out the guiding blueprint for the expansion of ‘cultural industries’ within the National Five Year Plan documents, it rewards regional actors that comply, often with special awards of recognition; it censors and encourages self-censorship, and it punishes transgressors.3 While media industries are pushed towards the market and while thousands of independent design and media service companies have emerged in the past decade, the state remains highly interventionist. Moreover, while media bases, creative clusters and cultural parks involve large amounts of capital, and bring in foreign investors, the key planning processes always involve Chinese Communist Party actors: these include local government officials, party secretaries and propaganda department heads (Keane 2011).
In characterizing the transformation of China’s cultural and creative sectors, I prefer to use the description ‘authoritarian liberalism’ (see Donald and Keane 2002; Jayasuriya 2002). While this may on the surface appear to be an oxymoron, I believe it is more appropriate to describe many of the practices now taking place in the cultural sphere. Authoritarian liberalism constitutes a model of governance in which Chinese people have been allowed increasing freedom to choose, consume and to be self-regulating. However, the authoritarian spectre of the disciplinary state remains as a fallback strategy of governance should civic freedom lead to anti-government uprising (Donald and Keane 2002: 6). In applying authoritarian liberalism to cultural policy, we can take account of the ‘arm’s length principle’. This positions the actions of the Chinese state relative to cultural and media practitioners.
