Creative industries to be developed
By Yin Ping (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-05 05:30

SHANGHAI: The government should strike a balance between protecting the rights of China's creative minds and enabling the public to have more access to their work.

That was the message from both domestic and foreign experts at a forum on Friday focusing on creative industries such as advertising, architecture and design and intellectual property protection.

The forum was part of Shanghai's international creative industry week which will end tomorrow.

"We need a system which maximises access, which is in everyone's interest, and also enables creative people to have a reasonable reward from their work," said John Howkins, governor of the London Film School and author of the Creative Economy.

As China's creative industries are still in their infancy, said Hua Jian, a professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the country needs to spread information in order to inspire creativity.

"We have to popularize knowledge first and then expect people to be more creative," he said.

He added that globally, a free environment is ideal for artists to come up with new ideas, but Shanghai must be pragmatic.

"Our creative industries are not as developed as those in industrialized countries. We have to set up a kind of 'hotbed' in order for our artists to grow."

Creative industries in Shanghai are being seen as a new economic engine.

Last year, the city's creative industries created 49.3 billion yuan (US$6.1 billion) in added value, 6.6 per cent of the GDP.

Xu Jianguo, director of the Shanghai Economic Commission, said the city aims to raise that ratio to 10 per cent by 2010.

Xu also announced the opening of 18 licensed creative industry areas, following the first batch of 18 in April. The new batch covers more than 30 hectares and is mostly located in Shanghai's old industrial complexes.

The first 18 clusters, housing more than 800 companies from all over the world, feature industrial firms involved in design, games and software design, the media and fashion.

In 2003, China's creative industries created an added value of 357.7 billion yuan (US$44 billion). Worldwide, the creative economy was estimated at US$2.9 trillion this year and is expected to be worth US$4.1 trillion in 2010.

(China Daily 12/05/2005 page3)