Spring of Cultural Creative Industry

The cultural creative industry has existed and prospered in China for years. The Plan for Boosting the Cultural Industry， a guideline document issued by the State Council on July 22， 2009， presents a roadmap to future and gives support policies for further expansion and prosperity of the booming cultural industry. The document， for the first time in history， explicitly gives the cultural creative industry a status as important as those of film， television， publishing， animation and cartoon.

The cultural creative industry is now a high-profile contributor to Zhejiang’s economy. August 2009 witnessed the CPC Zhejiang Committee and the Zhejiang Provincial Government jointly issue a development plan for the province’s cultural creative industry.

Hangzhou led Zhejiang in this endeavor. In April， 2008， Hangzhou hosted a national convention on the development of the national cultural creative industry. Since then the city has seen flourishing growth of cultural creative ventures. In the first three quarters， the city’s cultural creative industry achieved a added value of 41.31 billion yuan. This was an increase of 15.0% calculated in terms of comparable prices， 6.5% more than the city’s service industry’s growth rate. The added value accounted for 11.9% of the city’s GDP. These numbers demonstrate that the cultural creative industry in Hangzhou has turned from an emerging industry into a key pillar of the city’s economy.

Creative Industry Parks

Hangzhou has now ten creative industry zones where businesses gravitate and cluster. The ten zones are spread across the city， some in downtown Hangzhou and some in suburbs， all open to the city’s rural and urban history， scenic beauty and tradition. In southern Hangzhou， a cluster of villages are nestled in an area of 20 km2. The rural Shangri-La is collectively known as the White Horse Lake to the outside world and is one of the UNEP Global 500 Laureates. Nowadays， the rural Shangri-La is home to a flourishing creative industry. New buildings have emerged around the lake area， home to China’s first animation and cartoon museum and a number of digital and television ventures. Shanyi Village in the lake area is quietly undergoing an unprecedented face-lifting project with its 500 rural houses morphing into SOHO studios and maintaining their rustic charm. The cultural creative industry is something new in the life for the rural residents in the lake area. Artists and business people are able to submerge themselves in a picturesque ecology while villagers see how artists work at close hand. In a recent national appraisal， the White Horse Lake area came out first for its unique development that absorbs ecology and rural beauty and boosts cultural creativity.

The West Brook (or Xixi) Wetland， China’s first national wetland park， now retains a small part of once a huge spread of wetland in the west suburb of Hangzhou. The rural wetland beauty is now largely surrounded by the city’s westward urban sprawl， making it more precious and eye-opening to modern urbanites.

59 quiet houses (built or refurbished to showcase the original rural life in the area) scattered in the wetland are assigned over to a cultural creative project. The West Brook in the ancient time was a legendary tourism attraction， visited by many prominent scholars， poets， artists and writers such as Bai Juyi， Su Dongpo， Dong Qichang， Qin Shaoyou， Huang Binhong， Yu Dafu and Xu Zhimo in ancient times and modern times. Their visits and their descriptions of their tours are part of the national and local cultural history. The houses in the wetland are offered to A-list cultural celebrities including painters， writers， playwrights， directors， television hosts， etc. As exchanges， these cultural greats will stay in Hangzhou for a few months per year and hold regular cultural activities in Hangzhou to help the city’s cultural creative industry.

October 1， 2009， the National Day， saw the Imperial Street of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) reopening to the public after a long and large-scale refurbishment project. Glorious though it was in a past of 800 years ago， the street with roadside leafy trees has a much modern name in modern times: Zhongshan North Road (named after Dr. Sun Yat-sen， the revolutionary leader of the 1911 Revolution that brought down the Qing Dynasty). For a long time after 1949 up to recent years， the street was reduced to a shopping area of labor protection articles， household plastic products， small low-end restaurants and hardware shops though part of the road was flanked by some buildings redolent of grand and majestic architectural styles in the first half of the 20th century.

The refurbishment project itself was a cultural creative venture masterminded by professors and students of Hangzhou-based China Academy of Art. And the project has upgraded the shopping street， restored it back to a modern grandeur， and turned it into an ambitious and descent business area.

Across Zhejiang

Hangzhou is not the only city where the cultural creative industry is taking off. Ningbo has seen a group of cultural creative parks take shape.

Wenzhou has turned Shuomen Street into a Mecca for creative artists and art-oriented entrepreneurs. The street is home to clusters of old-styled residences， which now shine in restored old-time glory in white walls and black gates. LOFT at 7# Academy Road is housed in the restored and refurbished old workshops of the former Wenzhou Metallurgical Factory. The LOFT with a total investment estimated at 50 million yuan will be home to a full range of cultural creative businesses in advertisement， industrial design， architectural design， fashion， film and television production， meetings and exhibitions， publishing， entertainment and shows， animation and cartoon. The LOFT is expected to be a powerful incubator for cultural creative businesses that will boost the economy in southern Zhejiang and radiate out to the northern Fujian Province to the south of Zhejiang.

Shaoxing develops its own cultural creative industry in its unusually extraordinary way. Shaoxing runs a mega textile market called China Textile City. The marketplace looks like a modern city and it is now a great economic hallmark of the city. So now Shaoxing plans to spend one billion yuan in two phases on building a huge marketplace of cultural creative industries. The first phase is about 180，000 square meters and the second is about 120，000 square meters large. The marketplace is masterminded by Zhejiang Zeen Industry Company.

Zhejiang boasts a dominating private sector of its economy. The growth of private businesses is of great significance to the growth of the cultural creative industry across the province. Yiwu Cultural Products Expo is China’s only export-oriented trade fair for sports and cultural products. In 2009， the trade fair concluded transactions worth 1.849 billion yuan. On October 28， 2009， Hengdian Film and Television Industry Experimental Zone held a symposium on its development strategies. In November， 2009， Huayi Brothers Media Group was listed on Shenzhen-based Growth Enterprise Market (GEM). This historical IPO attracted the attention to Hengdian World Studios in Zhejiang， a place dubbed as China’s Hollywood， which is a key production base of Huayi Brothers. As if in response to the new upsurge of cultural creative ventures in the region， Yiwu Creativity Park officially came into operation on the campus of Yiwu Commerce College. The creativity venture serves as a platform to serve businesses of small commodities.

No region and cities in Zhejiang wants to be left behind. Jiaxing， Taizhou， Zhoushan， Quzhou and Lishui are now taking measures to build cultural creative industries into a pillar of their respective regional economies.