Beijing looks to lead in cultural creative sector

A cultural park is being rebuilt in Beijing, March 30, 2018. [Photo/VCG]

Beijing is launching policies to develop, regulate and coordinate its many cultural creative industrial parks, with hopes of establishing the capital as a leader in the sector, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The creative industrial parks gather together companies engaged in anything from movie production and video game software to book publishing and silk spinning.

City authorities released two documents — a draft of the Beijing cultural creative industrial park accreditation and management measures and Opinion on Accelerating the Construction and Development of Cultural Creative Industrial Demonstration Parks — at a news conference held by the Beijing committee of the Communist Party of China.

The draft specifies the standards, procedures, management, assessment mechanisms and support services intended for the parks, according to Yu Junsheng, Beijing’s deputy Party secretary, while the opinion includes 19 supportive policies aimed at providing financial support for existing and planned demonstration parks.

Support will cover areas including infrastructure, public services, financial services and re-utilization of aging factories, and will help incubate innovative startups while providing talent services and brand promotion.

Accredited parks will be granted licenses in October.

In recent years, cultural creative industrial parks have been springing up in Beijing, supporting growth of the sector. Last year, with more than 254,000 broadly defined cultural-related companies, the industry’s added value reached 390.88 billion yuan ($61.04 billion), accounting for 14 percent of the city’s GDP.

In the first quarter, the industry continued to grow rapidly, with the added value increasing by 15.4 percent year-on-year.

Beijing aims to construct model cultural creative industrial parks to improve their overall quality and lay a solid foundation for the city to lead the way in the sector, authorities said.