Punching above their weight: Native cultural industries at global level

The past four decades has not only witnessed Shenzhen grow from a small fishing town into an affluent metropolis, but recorded how the city fostered its creativity.

Nowadays, Shenzhen is showing strong performance in the cultural and creative industry and is close to its goal of becoming an influential and creative global city.

Shenzhen is a design city, local officials said. It was appointed as a UNESCO City of Design in 2008, becoming the first city in China to join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

There are thousands of design firms and professionals in Shenzhen, covering a variety of sectors such as graphics, industry, interior and architecture, and fashion. Their competitive edge has won a large market share in China and gained international recognition.

Run by the Shenzhen government and supported by the UNESCO Creative Cities, the Shenzhen Design Week is now a premier event in the city's cultural calendar every spring.

This year's event is shaped around the theme of Design for the Future. In 2019, it discussed issues under the theme of Design for Sustainability. Over 1,000 designers from more than 30 countries and regions including Britain, Japan and Singapore brought more than 2,500 works to the event.

Apart from activities taking place every month and year in Shenzhen, deep cultural exchanges are being carried out among other core cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Shenzhen has taken part in the construction of a Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong science and technology innovation corridor. Positive results have been yielded so far.

These include the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park; Shimao Shenzhen-Hong Kong International Center; Shenzhen and Macao Creative Week; Shenzhen-Macao Innovation Research Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine; the base for researching and ascertaining foreign laws; and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Weather Research Center for Monitoring, Warning and Forecasting.

The cultural and creative industry in Shenzhen has breadth and balance, according to local officials.

The city's animation and gaming sector is set apart from its peers in China and has seen fast growth for several years. Shenzhen is home to several leading animation and gaming enterprises, including Tencent, Global Digital and iDreamSky.

Local cultural tourism has also been a trendsetter across China. Overseas Chinese Town Enterprises and Fantawild have been awarded as two of the top 30 national cultural enterprises for years. Their theme parks were ranked the world's fourth- and fifth-largest ones respectively in terms of visitor numbers.

The city established a cultural property exchange as early as 2009, the only one of its kind in China.

The output value of Shenzhen's printing industry is the highest in China and many enterprises such as Shenzhen Yuto Packaging, Shenzhen Jinjia Color Printing Group and Artron are among the top 100 printing businesses in China.

Shenzhen is currently the largest gold jewelry production base in China, accounting for more than 60 percent of the domestic market.

In the cultural exhibition industry, Shenzhen holds the country's only national-level, international and comprehensive cultural fair: China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair. It is considered an important platform to help Chinese culture go global.

The ICIF has been held for 15 sessions. Its turnover has rocketed from 153.54 billion yuan ($22.08 billion) in 2015 to 234.01 billion yuan in 2019, an increase of 52.42 percent.

In Shenzhen, there is a slew of assorted cultural industry bases with local characteristics. The Dafen Oil Painting Village is one of them. In the 4-square-kilometer village, there are more than 40 large-scale companies, over 800 galleries, studios and stationery stores, and about 15,000 employees.

Another highlight is Guanlan Print Village located in Longhua district of Shenzhen. This is a national-level demonstration base for the cultural industry, featuring modern printmaking workshops with Hakka cultural elements.

Presently, Shenzhen is home to 135 domestically listed and overseas-listed cultural enterprises and more than 100,000 legal entities in culture and related industries, whose total assets reached 1.37 trillion yuan. Its number of employees surpassed 1 million.

There are 61 cultural and creative industrial parks above the city level in Shenzhen, attracting nearly 10,000 cultural and creative enterprises. The operating revenue generated by these enterprises and park operators exceeded 200 billion yuan and the tax revenue exceeded 15 billion yuan, according to an industry insider.