Integration of culture and technology takes center stage at Shanghai forum

A forum focusing on the integration of culture and technology was held in Shanghai on Friday as part of the ongoing 2026 Pujiang Innovation Forum. With Hunan province serving as the guest province of honor and hosting the culture-technology integration forum, the event convened government officials, industry leaders, and leading academics to explore how digital innovation is reshaping the cultural landscape.

Liu Yang, vice-governor of Hunan province, highlighted the province's achievements in the intelligent audiovisual sector.

"We have gathered over 5,000 upstream and downstream enterprises and more than 68,000 industry professionals, focusing on breakthroughs in key core technologies in the intelligent audiovisual field," Liu said. "In 2025, the province's audiovisual industry revenue reached 290 billion yuan ($43.2 billion)."

Hunan has also pioneered the world's first large model dedicated to Chinese history and cultural heritage, achieving the digital reproduction of 79,000 precious cultural relics, he added.

Chen Jie, vice-mayor of Shanghai, emphasized the natural partnership between the regions.

"From the Huangpu River to both banks of the Xiang River, Shanghai and Hunan share connected cultures, business relationships, and mutually reinforcing innovation," Chen said.

Looking ahead, Shanghai will continue to deepen the application of generative AI, extended reality, and other frontier technologies in the cultural sphere, joining hands with Hunan to tackle the contemporary challenge of cultural-technological integration, he added.

Yang Zhenbin, Party secretary of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, outlined higher education's role in the integration.

"For universities, promoting the integration of culture and technology is both an important responsibility in serving the construction of a culturally strong and technologically strong country, and a contemporary task of promoting interdisciplinary studies and cultivating versatile talents," Yang said.

Ding Wenhua, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, traced AI's evolution in digital creative technology.

"The question of how current AI understands our physical world has entered the second stage after the development of large models," Ding said. "The core of the integration of culture and technology is to carry forward the characteristics of Chinese culture."

Marc Aurel Schnabel, dean of the school of design at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, challenged conventional thinking about virtual reality by proposing that people bring virtual experiences back into the physical world. Instead of purely replicating environments in virtual reality, he emphasized finding ways to manifest virtual space in reality to enrich and empower everyday living spaces.

Li Jiaping, vice-president of strategic development at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, emphasized the role of culture.

"Culture is the ultimate prompt. It sets all our background, all our knowledge, all related emotions and related values," Li said. "Culture is the largest context, the largest background, and the greatest value of human civilization."