The cultural service sector should accelerate its pace to go global and play a bigger role in China's service trade, Wang Chao, assistant to the Minister of Commerce, told Shanghai's entrepreneurs at a meeting last month.
The meeting of 11 local cultural service companies was held after Wang paid a visit to the Shanghai International Cultural Service Trade Platform, China's leading international cultural service trade platform.
Wang said China is an important world power in commodity trading, but not so strong in the service trade.
But the Chinese government is making plans to change that. According to a service trade development blueprint released by the Ministry of Commerce last year, China's service trade volume is expected to reach $400 billion in 2010, with an average annual growth of more than 20 percent.
Wang said the cultural service sector should be a potential field in the entire service trade, although it now has a small proportion compared with services in manufacturing and tourism.
One of the reasons for the potential is that the Chinese government is now encouraging the nation's cultural service companies to go global to make the Chinese creations better known to the world.
And along with its remarkable economic growth in the past three decades, China's influence on the world is on the rise, leading people to want more knowledge about its culture.
Wang highlighted the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, saying it was a grand stage to draw the attention of the world to the brilliance of China's culture.
Seeing a promising global market for the sector, Wang proposed four levels of cooperation should be strengthened for the industry.
Coordination among central government departments such as the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Culture should be enhanced to give strong support, he said.
Also, he noted cooperation between various levels of government and enterprises should also be strengthened and preferential policies formulated to help the enterprises in their international bid.
He said there should be a means of interaction between the central and local governments like that begun in July, when the Ministry of Commerce and Shanghai municipal government signed an agreement on jointly promoting service trade, including cultural services.
Finally, Wang said, domestic enterprises should maintain close cooperation with China's overseas diplomatic and business organizations like embassies and chambers of commerce to broaden their contact channel with foreign partners and consumers.
Wang said the central government and many local governments are now showing strong support to the cultural service trade through the release of preferential policies.
Wang also pointed out that he is deeply impressed with the rapid development of cultural service in Shanghai, noting that the city is now leading the country in fields like movie and TV program production, cartoons and animation and the construction of cultural creation industrial parks.
He expects the Shanghai International Cultural Service Trade Platform to play an important role in promoting the globalization of China's cultural service industry.
Source: China Daily
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