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Cultural and Creative Industries: New Engine for Economic Growth

China Today by Li Gang, October 14, 2016 Adjust font size:

Cultural and creative industries (CCI) are regarded as a positive force in promoting consumption, international trade, and employment, and also for strengthening social cohesion. This is because the CCI feature strong industrial integration, high added value, and are environment-friendly. These emerging industries enjoy a rising status in the pattern of national economy, and will hopefully become a driving force for industrial upgrading, macroeconomic growth, and technological innovation.

World Consensus

When proceeding from global economic development, upon entering the post-industrial stage a country inevitably develops cultural and creative industries. This is proven by a glance at the history of many developed countries.

One example is that of Great Britain in the 1990s. Having become mired in a manufacturing crisis, the British government carried out policies aimed at developing cultural and creative industries. The CCI sector soon became pivotal in revitalizing the economy, and helped to reduce unemployment. CCI are undoubtedly now a pillar of the British economy, accounting for as much as 8.2 percent of the country’s GDP, and employing 8 percent of the total workforce. Its creative product exports have been growing at a yearly rate of 11 percent.

Germany, another big manufacturing country, also attaches great importance to cultural and creative industries. They have become increasingly prominent in its economic pattern as a whole since 2009. In 2012 the added value of the German CCI sector rose to £63.6 billion – 2.31 percent of GDP that year, and 10 percent higher than in 2009. The CCI’s contribution to national economic growth was still dwarfed by that of financial services, machinery manufacturing, and auto industry. But it nevertheless surpassed chemical and energy industries. In 2012, a total of 246,000 cultural and creative companies in Germany provided over a million positions, or sufficient for three percent of the entire working-age population.

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