Wuxi works on cultural exports

Wuxi, the only national cultural export base in East China's Jiangsu province, hosted a cloud conference Aug 26 to encourage cultural enterprises from home and abroad to communicate with each other.

Over 30 foreign investors from 20 countries and about 100 local cultural firms exchanged ideas on cooperating through the internet. Shenzhen 7Road Technology Co and Wuxi Studios signed new deals with partners during the conference.

A cultural trade service platform named Cultural Wuxi Cloud, orWen Hua Xi Yun, was launched at the conference. Co-built with paixin.com, it will become a cross-border e-commerce platform for all kinds of cultural products and services around the world.

In 2019, the city's import and export volume of cultural trade totaled 8.6 billion yuan ($1.25 billion), accounting for 9.2 percent of the total service trade import and export volume, according to Wang Xing, the director of Wuxi bureau of commerce.

The eastern Chinese city received over 100 million visitors in 2019, bringing in total revenue of 210 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.2 percent, Wang said.

Over 21,000 cultural enterprises are under development in Wuxi. The city has built 17 highly concentrated cultural industrial parks, including Wuxi Studios, National Industrial Design Park, National Advertising Industrial Park and National Software Park.

Wang said that Wuxi has developed unique advantages in the cultural industry, featuring film and television production, internet culture, industrial design, local cultural heritage, digital production, cultural tourism and exhibitions.

Wuxi released a three-year initiative on the cultural industry in 2019, saying the city will make efforts to build over 1,000 cultural enterprises above designated size and two cultural industry clusters whose revenue will exceed 10 billion yuan by the end of 2021. The cultural industry is expected to account for over 5.5 percent of the city's total GDP in three years.