Third, cultivate leading cultural enterprises. We will improve the overall strength and international competitiveness of China’s culture industry by uniting or reconstructing cultural enterprises from different regions in different sectors and foster strategic investors. The Ministry of Culture will give priority to the resources integration of the animations, comics and games industry and cultivate a number of ACG business groups with independent innovation capability; it will push forward the institutional reform within performing troupes and build highly-competitive performing arts groups; it will reorganize and integrate the performing arts resources from different regions and provide theatres with great attractiveness and profound influence for arts performers——the Broadway of Beijing is such a project in embryo. Fourth, strengthen the construction and management of cultural industry parks. We will cultivate a number of demonstration bases for the industries of cultural creativity, film and television production, publishing, printing and duplicating, performing arts and entertainment, comics and animations; support and accelerate the development of culture industries with distinctive regional and national characteristics; selectively foster several model industry parks which can simultaneously operate the creative research and development, enterprises acceleration, products trading and talents training. We will offer facilitation in infrastructure construction, land utilization and tax policies for those parks and bases within the framework of the planning; we will further the overall planning for the construction of cultural industry parks and bases and guarantee their quality and distinctive features.

Fifth, let the major projects be the driving force. The projects of The City of Animation and Game as well as the National Animation Industry Park has been launched as the result of the cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and the Beijing Municipal Government, the Ministry and the Tianjin Municipal Government respectively, leading China’s culture industry to develop in clusters on a larger scale. The projects aimed at the revitalization of the domestic animation and game industry injected creativity into it. In the future, we will complete a series of major culture industrial projects that play leading, strategic and fundamental role, such as the projects of a national ticket network for cultural events, national theaters for performing arts and Chinese culture theme parks.

Sixth, further boost cultural consumption and stimulate domestic cultural demands. We will continue to construct and renovate cinemas, theaters and other infrastructure facilities to provide necessary material conditions for cultural consumption; promote a combined development of the culture industry and tourism in order to create a win-win situation where culture elevates tourism and tourism disseminates culture. We will pour our energy into the artistic creativity and design industries of graphic design and industrial design so as to add a cultural touch and aesthetic taste into the manufacturing industry. We will reduce the price of cultural products and services intended for rural areas and communities by granting a certain amount of subsidies.

Encouraging the development of the culture industry has become the overwhelming trend in the global economic crisis. Owing to their long history of civilization, rich cultural resources, high cultural and artistic level, the members and observer states of the SCO possess firm foundation and great potential to develop their culture industries. Based on the principles of strengthening friendship, promoting cooperation, creating mutual benefit and win-win situations, we are willing to further the cooperation with member states and observer states in the culture industry. To this end, China suggests launching culture industry cooperation to write a new chapter in the history of the SCO’s cultural exchanges. Thus we propose to:

1 Establish an SCO cultural industrial cooperation forum. Within the framework of the forum, governments and civil culture institutions, culture agents, culture enterprises will be able to exchange experiences and explore possibilities for cooperation. The forum can be held once a year and can be either held by China or by each state in turn. If none of the interested parties think otherwise, we hope that the very first forum can be held in China in the second half of this year to offer SCO culture enterprises, culture institutions and other individuals in the culture circle a platform for communication and cooperation.

2 Provide qualified training for managerial talents in the culture industry. The lack of talents in creativity, marketing, management and technology development, especially versatile talents adept at artistic practice and managerial art results in the glaring contradiction between the current rapid development of the culture industry and inadequate quantity and imbalanced quality of the talents in the industry. We should enhance the communication between and joint training for the talents, increase the sharing of human resources and improve the overall level of management of culture enterprises. The details like training methods and content can be discussed in the upcoming forum. I believe that if a mechanism for talent training as this would be established, each of the SCO member states’ culture industry will be given an enormous boost and greatly relieved from the predicament caused by the shortage of talents. 

3. Launch activities like sending delegations to other states and holding culture industrial exhibitions from this year as the initial steps in culture cooperation. We sincerely welcome SCO member states, observer states and all the friends in culture circles to participate in China’s international culture fairs, for instance, the International Cultural Industry Fair in Shenzhen, and we really look forward to your participation.

4. Promote culture trade, achieve mutual benefit and a win-win situation. As the economic interdependence of each country is increasingly deepening, we should pin our hopes of expanding the consumer demand mainly on the stimulation of cultural consumption demand and actively participate in the cultural trade. We should seize the development opportunity to further improve the policies related to the culture industry and form a better-linked industry chain. We should promote the communication and cooperation between culture enterprises of SCO states and encourage more import and export of cultural products to enhance the international competitiveness of SCO states’ culture industry.

A whole year’s time is just like a moment, I still remember the time we spent in Kazan, Russia. The previous year has witnessed our successful cultural exchanges and communications through our unrelenting efforts and enormous work done by each country’s cultural departments. Here at this time, I’d like to thank everyone in the SCO Expert Working Group for all the work they’ve done to ensure the success of this meeting. I believe the agreement we reached in this meeting will facilitate the communication and cooperation between us and stimulate each country’s cultural undertakings and culture industry.

(Translated by Yao Xin)