The Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Beijing Municipal Committee and the Information Office of the Beijing Municipal People's Government jointly held a press conference on Aug. 21 to release the "Opinion on Promoting the Innovation and Development of Cultural and Creative Industries" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinion"). At the meeting, the publicity department introduced the background on drafting the "Opinion," and the city's State-owned Cultural Assets Supervision and Administration Office introduced the main contents and elaborated on issues of public concern.

The cultural and creative industry, as a pillar industry for the economic and social development of Beijing, plays an important role in supporting a "high-end, sophisticated and advanced" economic structure and advancing the construction of a national cultural center. Since Beijing became the first across China to develop the cultural and creative industry in 2006, the industry has maintained a rapid growth. In 2017, the industry, with more than 254,000 cultural enterprises, registered an added value of 390.88 billion yuan (about US$57 billion) in Beijing, and the legal cultural entities above the designated scale recorded a revenue of 1.6 trillion yuan. From January to June this year, the industry continued to show good momentum, with the revenue of the legal cultural entities above the designated scale reaching 849.34 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.6 percent. The cultural and creative industry has become an important engine driving Beijing's high-end and advanced economy.

In the new era, Beijing's cultural and creative industry is confronted with new opportunities and challenges. In order to strengthen the top-level design and the first-mover advantage and speed up the transformation and upgrading of the cultural and creative industry, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and the municipal government worked out and issued the "Opinion on Promoting the Innovation and Development of Cultural and Creative Industries." 

The "Opinion" consists of four parts: "overall requirements," "optimizing the construction of a high-end industrial system," "organizing the implementation of industrial promotion actions," and "guarantee measures." The "Opinion" focuses on promoting industrial upgrading, optimizing the development environment for the industry, improving the guarantee system, and promoting the high-end, integrated, intensive and internationalized development of the cultural and creative industry. The "Opinion" is expected to point to the direction and chart the course for the future development of the industry so that it can achieve quality development.

The "Opinion" maps out the kind of cultural and creative industry Beijing should be developing in the new era. The document states that the high-end and advanced cultural and creative industry should have "two main directions" and "nine key areas." The two main directions are "digital creativity" and "content copyright": one emphasizes the functional support of technological innovation, while the other highlights the value of cultural content. The nine key areas are creative design, media integration, radio, film and television, publishing, animation and games, entertainment, relics, museums and intangible cultural heritage, trade in art, and cultural and creative think tanks.

In order to fully stimulate Beijing's cultural and creative industry, the "Opinion" proposed nine major aspects for industrial promotion, namely cultural space expansion, key enterprise support, major project guidance, cultural consumer spending promotion, cultural trade promotion, financial innovation in the cultural industry, cultural brand integration, service platform sharing, and entrepreneurship in cultural undertaking. Various incentive and guidance measures are proposed to provide all-round support for the high-quality development of the cultural and creative industry.

In addition, the "Opinion" also puts forward specific measures on the improvement of the working mechanism and the policy system, as well as the guaranteeing of funds and land use.

The "Opinion" is the first document of its kind that promotes the cultural and creative industry issued jointly by the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee and municipal government in recent years. It clarifies the development targets of the industry in Beijing in the new era, and the priority areas and growth targets for developing a high-end system of the cultural and creative industry and constructing the national cultural center. As the next step, the city authorities will make more specific policies to enhance the integration of culture and technology so as to promote key industries such as film, television and music. The various districts of Beijing will also formulate supporting measures based on their actual conditions. Under the guidance of the "Opinion," Beijing aims to form a "1+N+X" policy system based on the industrial policies and supporting policies in its districts, and implement supporting measures so that the "Opinion" can be put into use to produce the best results.

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