From "Made in China" to "Created in China": China's quest to reposition itself on the global map
The Creative China: The oriental power seeks an image take off. (Photo/Li Zhenyu)
When world discovered China, the developing country was deemed as the "Manufacturing Factory of the Globe" — a major provider of low-cost, abundant labor and low added-value products. The popularly widespread phrase — "Made in China", in most cases, was associated with, in the West, an image perceived as cheap and low-end. China's creative side has remained undiscovered.
When China embraced the world with its opening-up policy and extraordinary economic growth, the Awakening Dragon had embarked on a golden journey to transform itself, from being labor-intensive to being knowledge-intensive, from rising dependently on the growth of hard power to a full-blown renaissance of soft power, from the crude, cut-price "Made in China" to an imaginably refined, top-notch "Created in China". China is taking active measures to build up a nation of innovation.
The Creative Innovation
Assuming that one has to outline what is happening in China, digging up only one word, it is "innovation".
As the world's second-largest economy is turning around to a cultural-based economic growth, innovation in the cultural sector becomes the current focal point in the context of China's economic reform and development.
China is experiencing a radical reform in its cultural regime from the times of State ownership of cultural institutions to a marketized and globalized cultural modernity.
This process has been forcefully and effectively encouraged by the Chinese central government. The thinking behind the move is to unleash the sleeping Dragon's long-time constrained creative power, build up its cultural and creative industries from a low base and develop a more sound and sustainable development model.
China's current innovation in cultural regime, being built around the concept of creative economy, is, in essence, centered on nurturing the nation's infant creative industries.
By unleashing its creative power within and drawing on its abundant cultural resources, the ancient, culturally rich nation aspires to take creative and commercialized approaches to transform these intangibles into marketable deliverables, and ultimately enhance the quality and quantity of export cultural goods and services.
China's 12th Five-year Plan (2011-15) made it clear that the cultural and creative sector should be developed into a pillar industry in the next five years, a strategy that elevated the cultural and creative sector to an unprecedented, historical superior status in national economy.
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