beyondbrics

By Li Yan

China must develop its cultural prosperity and reform the country’s cultural system, concludes the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

What does this mean? There are probably as many answers as there are central committee members. At its heart is a balance that Beijing is trying to strike between encouraging China’s burgeoning culture and media industries for the money and prestige they can generate – and keeping close tabs on the political and social implications of diversity in cultural life. Let a hundred flowers bloom but keep a grip on the sprinkler.

The Chinese communist leaders don’t try too hard to explain themselves to the common man. Here is their statement, in typical Communist Party language:

having studied several important issues of deepening reform in the cultural system and the promotion of great socialist cultural development and prosperity, summing up the rich practice and valuable experience of China’s cultural reform and development, [we] conclude that studying and implementing great socialist cultural development and prosperity and furthering the rise to a new height of socialist cultural construction is of great importance and significance towards achieving the new victory of fully constructing a society of prosperity for all, creating a new situation of socialist cause with Chinese characteristics and realising the renaissance of Chinese civilisation.

Source: Statement of the sixth plenary session of the 17th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

I wouldn’t be surprised if you found the above text a puzzle. As a native speaker of Chinese, it is a maze to me, both in the original Chinese and in my own translation. Opacity aside, though, this is the first time Chinese communist leaders have focused on cultural issues in the Party’s plenary session for the past 15 years. So it must matter. But what does it mean?

For guidance we can turn to the People’s Daily, the voice of the Communist Party of China. It published an editorial headlined: A Great March Towards A Socialist Cultural Power.

Xinhua issued its own take, similarly headlined: An Action Guideline for Building A Socialist Cultural Power

China’s leaders appear to be impressed by the huge potential of China’s cultural industry, which is now worth Rmb1,100bn ($173bn) in 2010 and growing at an annual rate of 23 per cent. Even in its seemingly-innocuous non-political divisions, it demands to be taken far more seriously by the country’s rulers.

“China has two targets,” explains John Howkins, vice dean and visiting professor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s School of Creativity. “One is to increase its exports of media, entertainment, etc. The other is to ensure they convey a ‘Chinese’ or even a CPC message. In many cases, these are inconsistent.”

As with so many of the reforms enacted over the past three decades, China’s rulers want to encourage free-market capitalism while retaining communist control.

Professor Yuanpu Jin, director of the centre for creative industries at the People’s University of Beijing, says the government will therefore split the industry in two.

“Most of the media and publishing businesses, except those involved in news, current affairs and politics, will be pushed towards the market,” he says.

“In TV stations, for example, broadcasting and programme production would be separated,” he told FTChinese. “Non-news parts of the operation such as production, advertising and so on would be converted into state enterprises and later changed into stake-holding companies through listings on the stock market.”

But this does not mean we should expect a free-for-all in non-news production. As we saw in the fate of Happy Girl – a talent show that attracted hundreds of millions of viewers before Beijing ordered it to cease production from next year – the CPC will not smile on anything that embraces the subversively political culture of viewer (a dangerous proxy for voter) participation.

This has far-reaching implications.

According to one cultural industry expert in Beijing, China has overlooked the importance of Chinese culture while focusing just on economic prosperity. This has led to a moral collapse and created a vacuum for western influence. “Having seen what has happened in the Middle East, the government is now concerned about cultural security and national security,” he says.

But Beijing’s plans for supplanting western influences are unlikely to have much appeal to audiences, at home or abroad. Howkins believes there is little interest in contemporary Chinese culture on global markets. “The potential for Chinese cultural products is huge but China’s policies on artistic and media security will severely inhibit market growth,” he says.

The People’s Daily speaks of similar concerns. This is from its editorial:

“Today’s world is going through a period of great development, great change and great adjustment… the exchange, convergence and confrontations of various ideas and culture have become more frequent. The position and function of cultural have become more evident in national competitiveness. The task of safeguarding national cultural security has become more difficult. And it has become more urgent and pressing to increase China’s national cultural soft power and China’s international cultural influence.”

Professor Zhaoxiao Zhang, head of the department of art and communication at the Beijing Dance Academy, goes even further.“Looking from the perspective of international competition, there are two issues,” she says “On the one hand, it is about effective communication and making a positive image for the country, for the government and for the party. On the other, it is about developing an overseas market for cultural and art products. When these two things are combined, cultural soft power will become an influential hard power.”

She argues that China’s cultural power is actually very strong. “We should not treat culture just as an instrument of the economy or a tool of propaganda,” she says. “We must abandon the GDP-driven approach. We should aim for cultural equilibrium.”

Li Yan is an editor at FTChinese

Related reading:
China struggles to stay on the right path, FT
China’s fear of the talent show, Gideon Rachman, FT