Mapping China: Music - State Policy: Cultural and Creative Industries Policy

The more liberal attitude of the state to cultural production should be understood in the context of a shift in the economy from export-oriented manufacturing (‘made in China’) to consumer-oriented services (‘created in China’). This shift implies stronger support for the cultural and creative industries, and emphasis on innovation, patents and inevitably copyright protection. For instance film is feeling this trend in the form of government funding and other support (for instance Wanda), but the music industry less so.

Western Examples

• The neo-Marxists Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer coined the term ‘the culture industry’ in 1944 to criticize the factory-like way popular music was produced.
• In the 1970s and 1980s culture played a role in the regeneration of post-industrial cities such as Manchester. Theories emerged that advised governments to invest in culture in order to improve their cities economically. Richard Florida’s ideas about the creative class are perhaps most widely known.

Marketization of Culture in China

The term ‘cultural industries’ replaced ‘cultural institutions’ (wenhua shiye) as the central cultural policy term in PRC documents around 2000. This new discourse has been successful because:

• It resonates well with the central government’s long term plan of changing the emphasis of China’s economy from production (‘made in China’) towards services (‘created in China’). It also has connections with other important issues, such as urbanization and sustainability.
• It gives the trend of marketization a theoretical framework. It argues that culture is produced by a range of industries that are not much different from others that the government regulates and is nowadays rarely directly involved in. According to this discourse it is as absurd for the government to pay the entire budget of a television station as it would be for it to buy all steel from a state-owned plant.
• Nevertheless the cultural industries discourse empowers officials and tells them they have an important role in organizing and stimulating culture.

Critiques and Challenges

• Depoliticization. The cultural industries discourse has framed for instance rock music and expressions of ‘ethnic minority’ culture in commercial frameworks and worked to co-opt them for festival culture and tourism. However, from Adorno to conservative forces in the CCP, Marxists believe and fear in the power of culture to mobilize people. Is producing culture really the same as producing steel?
• The Outline for the Tenth Five Year Plan (2000) first enshrined the term ‘cultural industries’ in a central policy document and exhibits the typical balancing act between capitalism’s profit maximisation and the communism’s social concerns. It argues: ‘The cultural industry units must push their production efficiency and economic impact to the maximum, constantly improve their operational management, provide the market with cultural and artistic products and services that satisfy demands, promote healthy values and that are diverse, and [thus] receive the largest social impact and the best economic returns.’
• Cultural or creative industries. After 2005 the discourse of the creative industries entered China. Rather than replacing ‘cultural industries’, both terms are used interchangeably. This confusion is deliberate, because the creative industries discourse is tied to Western notions of creativity, novelty, individuality (or small companies) and freedom (to experiment and of expression). By contrast the cultural industries discourse suits China’s stress on tradition and stability (or ‘harmony’), and its support of museums, education and (historical) tourism. Still the creative industries discourse is needed to explain how China is going to stimulate technological and business innovativeness, and to produce a Bill Gate (Microsoft) or Steve Jobbs (Apple).
• Local variations. There is no consensus on what industries are included under the cultural and/or creative industries. The city government of Beijing has formulated a ‘cultural and creative industries’ policy that includes software development and Internet services. Shanghai promotes the ‘creative industries’, which includes architecture and something labelled ‘fashionable consumption creativity’. Hangzhou’s cultural industries policy mentions education and Nanjing’s industrial design. Although Chinese books on the cultural industry habitually list administrative chaos as a potential thread, this decentralised approach is a normal phase in Chinese policy developments, after which certain areas may be singled out as best-practice.

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