China's cultural sector continues to pick up in 2023

BEIJING -- Major enterprises in China's cultural sector and related businesses saw a stellar increase in revenue and profits in 2023 as the industry continued to recover, official data showed Tuesday.

The surveyed 73,000 enterprises raked in 12.95 trillion yuan ($1.82 trillion) in combined revenue last year, up 8.2 percent from 2022, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

With the effective implementation of policies aimed at expanding domestic demand and promoting consumption, the potential of people's cultural consumption has been continuously unleashed, said Zhang Peng, an NBS senior statistician.

Profits of these firms rocketed 30.9 percent year-on-year to nearly 1.16 trillion yuan. Zhang said that internet information services, digital content services and internet cultural and entertainment platforms significantly powered the rapid growth.

Companies featuring new business forms, such as providers of wearable smart cultural devices, multimedia games and entertainment-purposed smart drones, pocketed almost 5.24 trillion yuan in revenue last year, a 15.3 percent uplift.