Culture industry displays 3,000 projects at fair
The mainland has introduced more than 3,000 cultural projects during the four-day International Cultural Industries Fair that ends today in Shenzhen, in an effort to draw investment and financing from home and abroad.
The projects, outlined in an investment handbook issued by the Ministry of Culture at the annual expo on Friday, cover 12 fields, including cultural tourism, media, movies and TV, and involve 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.
The four-day exhibition, with nearly 2,000 booths in the main hall, features a rich variety of culture-related products from across the country. It has attracted thousands of local residents, as well as more than 15,000 international buyers from nearly 100 countries. About 500 events, including forums, signing ceremonies and promotional meetings, have taken place.
As the country projects the cultural industry as a pillar of the nation's economy, while trying to expand Chinese cultural influence, the fair serves as a platform not only to display domestic cultural projects, but also to facilitate international cultural trade and collaborations.
The results of a survey on overseas cultural businesses were released at the fair, showing that more than 76 per cent of those businesses consider China a significant market for the development of their operations, and they have plans to expand in the country.
But more than half of about 300 businesses surveyed said they knew little about the Chinese cultural market, and, ironically, most considered cultural differences to be the biggest hurdles to doing business in China.
The fair, described by local media as 'a cultural feast', has featured folk dancing and singing, pot-making, stone carving and calligraphy. Many booths featured artefacts and regional specialties in the hope of securing large orders from potential collaborators.
Robert Sowa, a former farmer and teacher in the US who has been teaching English as a second language in Shenzhen for more than 10 years, said he had been to the fair every year to look around and learn. But this year he went to find a publisher for his book on learning English in China. 'I'm still looking around,' he said.
Huang Suqin, senior director of purchasing programmes for ICN TV, a bilingual station in the US, said she was most interested in domestic cartoons and TV shows on display at the fair.
The station signed a deal with Shenzhen TV for the North American broadcasting rights of an entertainment show featuring Shenzhen children.
ICN also bought the broadcasting rights of a popular TV dating show, from Jiangsu TV.
'Our target audience is overseas Chinese, but some Americans will gradually come to know the programme and like it,' Huang said, adding that modern and fashionable Chinese cultural programmes were quite popular in North America.
Some international buyers praised the expo as a good opportunity to find interesting cultural products and counterparts with whom to collaborate. They also said effective cultural exchanges were crucial to selling products. Louis Liu, director of international operations for an economic expansion committee in France, said about 20 per cent of buyers wanted original Chinese masterpieces, but other buyers would be happy with cheaper items that could be mass produced.
To help better understand the wants and needs of such foreign buyers, he suggested mainland cultural businesses hire foreigners and partner with foreign firms.
Helen Szaday von Gizycki, a member of the European Chamber of Art Experts, said China had dominated the art market in terms of artwork buyers and leading artists' works.
