Cultural & design industry

Since 2003, when Shenzhen took the lead in China for establishing strategies for developing a culture-based city, the local cultural and creative industries have achieved robust growth, with an annual growth rate of more than 20 percent. The cultural and creative industries yielded an added value of 194.9 billion yuan ($29.57 billion) in 2016, among the highest in the country. From 2004 to 2016, the added value produced by the cultural and creative industries accounted for 4.6 percent to 11 percent of the city's GDP. The sector has become an important engine for rapid and healthy economic development.

Cultural innovative development

At the beginning of 2016, the Shenzhen Cultural Innovative Development 2020 Plan (2020 Plan) was passed. The 2020 Plan is the guidance to the cultural development of the city for the following five years. It aims to help enhance the city's comprehensive cultural strength and build a modern, globalized, innovative city with a strong soft power.

Highlights of the 2020 plan

Shenzhen will explore the possibility of setting up a mechanism to protect unmovable cultural relics. The city will push forward the construction work to protect relics such as Nantou Ancient Town, Dapeng Fortress and Dawan Ancestral Residence. The city will try to find innovative ways to carry on and develop its intangible cultural heritage and other cultural traditions.

Shenzhen will set up a platform for social science research and think tanks. The city will implement a program to invite famous researchers to work at local academies and schools, introducing more visiting scholars and young scholars, and setting up postdoc stations. The aim is to increase the number of social science talents by 10-20 percent each year.

Shenzhen will try to hold a series of influential cultural festivals such as the World Choir Games. It will continue to organize Shenzhen (International) Science Film Week, Shenzhen Belt & Road International Music Festival, and Shenzhen International Photography Exhibition.

The city will encourage original cultural and art works. It hopes to encourage local companies to produce films with box office revenues surpassing 100 million yuan, create a song with national influence, compose a piece of quality symphonic work, create a popular show that tours at home and abroad, produce a TV entertainment show that ranks among the Top 5 in China and produce at least one quality TV series. The city will further the reform in local art performance companies, planning to set up an opera house and a drama theater. It will also encourage private companies to join the performance industry.

It will push forward the establishment of Shenzhen Internet authors' association to support the creation of online dramas, music, comics and animation.

The city will build a batch of key cultural facilities, some of which can be new landmarks. It will build a contemporary art and urban planning museum and a cultural and art center besides upgrading the existing venues. The aim is to gradually form two to three modern and international culture-themed blocks.

The city will offer more digital services in culture-related areas. For instance, free Wi-Fi will cover all cultural venues; museums, cultural centers, art galleries, libraries and book cities will have their collections accessible online. Social media and apps will be used more at public cultural institutions to make it more convenient for residents to use their services. It will push forward the building of a city-level big-data platform where people can get one-stop, interactive and tailor-made services of public cultural resources. The city will issue up to half a million "Cultural Shenzhen" bankcards which will offer discounts for culture-related expenses.

It will launch a "key project-driven" strategy to upgrade the cultural sectors. The city government will join forces with district governments to support one project of each district, including the international art exhibition center, Dafen Oil Painting Base, Fantawild Cultural Innovation Park, Huayi Brothers Cultural Town and Shenzhen movie cultural and creative park.

The city will improve national-level industry service platforms, focusing on streamlining the existing resources in cultural industries. It will push the Shenzhen Cultural Exchange to launch a news and publishing platform and a registering and trading platform for film and video copyrights. The city aims to build a Cultural Silicon Valley to set up a good example of combining culture with high-tech. It will build a Belt and Road service platform and a cultural foreign trade service platform. It will also build a Guangdong Provincial Digital Publishing Base in the city, which will help form a digital publishing industrial chain. It will push for the birth of a culture bank in Qianhai, build a national-level culture-in-association-with-finance pilot zone, and push for the China Cultural Industrial Investment Fund to invest in at least three cultural and creative companies.