City's creative sector growing in importance

The Ningbo Sci-Tech and Cultural Innovation Harbor is an area featuring residential, commercial and entertainment facilities. CHINA DAILY

Culture-related industries in the city of Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province outperformed much of the rest of the country in the first half of 2021, recording revenue of 95.26 billion yuan ($14.91 billion), up 36.7 percent year-on-year. The growth rate was 6.3 percentage points higher than the average level across the country, according to official data.

The good results come on the back of the Ningbo government's push to develop its cultural industry and integrate it with digitalization to help drive the city's economic growth.

According to local officials, in September, a total of 14 Ningbo-based cultural companies signed orders worth 170 million yuan during the recent China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair. At the China Yiwu Cultural and Tourism Products Trade Fair, works exhibited by more than 50 Ningbo industrial businesses won more than 20 medals, including three gold ones.

Playing a key role in driving the development of Ningbo's film and television industry, the Xiangshan Film and Television Town has attracted 1,487 companies this year alone, a year-on-year increase of 58.8 percent. These businesses have generated a revenue of 4.5 billion yuan, up 54.5 percent year-on-year.

"These figures come from our efforts in developing new cultural patterns that are based on digital technology and seizing the diversified market opportunities in the 5G era," said Chen Jianyu, director at the administrative committee of the film and cultural industrial park of Ningbo.

Ningbo has eight cultural industrial parks as well as nine entire blocks for cultural creation. These parks and blocks were upgraded to provincial level at a recent evaluation event.

The importance of Ningbo's cultural industry has continued to grow, while the size and output of its parks need to be further improved, a local official said.

Digital and new technologies have helped to empower the city's cultural industries.

It is home to media and culture businesses such as Qinchen that promote various products via livestream, and have revenues topping 100 million yuan.

The Ningbo government's "digital cockpit", or its "brain", is setting an example for the integration of multimedia and big data, and Ningbo Liangjian Network Media has developed a new retail mode that combines culture and digital technology, and has grown into a demonstration e-commerce business.

The city government will work on rolling out supporting policies and help mobilize more social capital to promote the development of the digital cultural industry, a local official said.

Aiming to build a hub for the national emerging digital cultural industry, the Ningbo government will accelerate establishing a high-quality cultural industrial system featuring creativity and competitiveness.

By 2025, the city will build 10 cultural industrial parks for digital culture and add more than 100 cultural companies, each with annual revenue surpassing 20 million yuan, and achieve a 50-billion-yuan output value of its digital cultural industry, doubling the figure in 2020.