Cultural sector meeting public demand for better life, official says

The cultural industry is an integral part of China's efforts to sustain the prosperity of the socialist culture and meet the people's ever-growing demands for a better life, a senior publicity official said on Friday.

Sun Zhijun, vice-minister of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, said extra efforts are needed to keep up the good work in the cultural industry, during a news conference on the sidelines of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

The total value-added of the cultural industry increased from 1.81 trillion yuan ($279 billion) in 2012 to over 3 trillion yuan last year, and its share of GDP increased from 3.48 percent to 4.14 percent. In the first half of 2017 the total revenue of major cultural enterprises reached 4.3 trillion yuan, registering a year-on-year increase of 11.7 percent.

Fresh development ideas need to be practiced to carry through supply-side structural reform in the cultural industry and nurture new cultural business models, said Sun. The people's increasing cultural demands mean providers of cultural products and services have to diversify their work while encouraging healthy consumption, he stressed.

"We should work harder to develop emerging cultural forms in line with traditional Chinese culture as well as initiatives such as the Internet Plus and Culture Plus," Sun said. The two flagship strategies are designed to deepen integration of the cultural industry with education, science and technology, tourism and manufacturing.

To build a modern cultural market system, China is expected to offer private capital wider access to the cultural industry and stimulate global cultural trade, Sun said.