Creative explosion

Fast economic development and environmental protection may seem to be a contradiction in terms, yet three cities in Hunan province are striving to disprove the notion.

Changsha, Zhuzhou, and Xiangtan, the core city circle of Hunan province is looking ahead to fulfill their goal of reaching a per capita GDP of 80,000 yuan by 2020 while staying green, and may have much to learn from the experience.

The reason is that unlike China's southeastern coastal cities, whose manufacturing power has turned into rapid GDP growth but also polluted air and rivers, the province is most famous for its cultural industry, which does little to environmental damage, consumes relatively little power and is known as a "green industry".

Although the province only ranks 12th on China's GDP scale, Hunan's cultural industry has been doing remarkably well. The local TV station ranks the first among provincial TV stations in China, and it has produced a series of nationally famous TV programs, among them the hugely popular Super Girls, known as the Chinese version of American Idol.

The Hunan publishing house is one of the most successful publishers in China, with the amount of music, science, and classical books tops among domestic publishers. The output of its original cartoon production industry also ranks first in China, with cartoon such as Bluecat a household name.

Official statistics show that the cultural industry makes up 4.9 percent of the province's total GDP. In 2007, the output of Hunan's cultural industry reached 92.5 billion yuan. The province hopes to make the value added of the industry reach 70 billion yuan in 2010 and 100 billion yuan by 2012, according to Jiang Jianguo, the province's head of publicity department.

People in Hunan are famous for their love of spicy food. And Ouyang Changlin, a veteran of the TV business and now a local official in charge of cultural industry, attributes the success of the cultural industry here to their love of spicy fare, which means the citizens are willing to try new things and take challenges when it comes to the media business.

"We have two main characteristics, one is innovation, another is our willingness to fight," says Ouyang.

Take the cartoon industry. According to Wang Hong, chairman of Greatdreams Cartoon Media Ltd Co, each year tens of thousands of students graduate from art schools in the province. And the provincial government found early on that this could be a large talent pool, especially when other industries including advertising and packaging could not absorb all the talents. Therefore the provincial government has held frequent seminars and given loans valued at millions of yuan to support the development of industry.

With the support of the provincial government, Wang's company, the leader of the local animation industry, has also been innovative in the application of technology. Instead of drawing cartoons by hand, the company imported technology to animate them with computers. This ensures large-scale cartoon production. Now the annual output of Greatdreams has surpassed 10,000 minutes. And that means the company provides half an hour of cartoon programs for TV stations each day. Wang says without the application of advanced technology a scale like this would be impossible.

To produce cartoons cooperatively online with computers has also changed the model of training, which makes the fast development of the industry sustainable.

In the traditional art class for cartoonists, each class has 25 students at most, according to Wang. But now thousands of people could work online together interactively. "You are my teacher today, and tomorrow you will be my student," says Wang. It used to take 11 years to train a research and development animator, and 14 years to train a qualified director. But now, through the online system, they usually can get the whole training process done within one or two years.

These innovative measures have helped the animation industry in the province boom. Now, the province has over 10,000 employees in the industry. The province has also set up an online technology platform to make public many resources. These could further help the animation industries to Hunan. In addition, the province has three satellite channels for animation, the largest number of such channels in China.

"The economy in Hunan is not very developed, but these innovative methods makes large amount of capital flow into Hunan," says Wang.

The current reform also means an opportunity for the cultural industry to move further.

The top two animation enterprises, Topbluecat and Greatdreams, have recently started a strategic cooperation. Combined together, now the two companies make up 40 percent of China's animation industry. And He Mengfan, president of the company, sees a huge market potential in the overall reform framework of building an energy saving and environment friendly society.

"Many traditional enterprises in the Changsha, Zhuzhou and Xiangtan have good products, but not good branding," says He. And his plan now is to help these traditional enterprises to improve their cultural image.

For instance, Liuyang, a city in the province, is famous for its fireworks industry, but most of the fireworks makers compete at the same level without a strong brand. Recently the Topbluecat company has begun making positive sparks with a local fireworks maker. Under the cooperation agreement, Topbluecat gave the fireworks company authorization to use the Bluecat image for a safe fireworks market especially designed for children. They also plan to use more images of fireworks in animated movies for future mutual marketing.

For He, the construction of an energy saving and environmentally friendly society in Hunan also means the fast development of a hi-tech and manufacturing service industry and the company also plans to enter the game making industry.

They also plan to set up a creative service outsourcing center, and enter the value added industries such as cartoon clips, games and designing ringtones.

"We are going to take the opportunity of building a 'two type society', to explore a new model that both suit our own development, and contribute to the overall development of Changsha, Zhouzhou, and Xiangtan," says He.

(China Daily 10/20/2008 page10)