As emerging technologies reshape the cultural production chain, content producers must prioritize quality, ensuring that technology serves positive ends and allows culture to thrive, officials and experts emphasized at an industry forum in Changsha, Hunan province, on Monday.
The 2026 Culture and Technology Industry Development Forum — the first of its kind — brought together nearly 1,400 guests from the cultural and tech sectors to discuss advancing cultural productivity through innovation.
Addressing the opening ceremony of the event, Ji Bingxuan, former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China, highlighted that culture provides value orientation for technological innovation, while technology offers robust support for cultural development.
"Major technological breakthroughs have always driven profound changes in how culture is produced, presented, and disseminated," Ji said.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, 16 sub-sectors with new cultural formats — including internet services, the digital economy, and smart cultural consumption — generated 7.67 trillion yuan ($1.15 trillion) in revenue last year, marking a 15.1 percent increase year-on-year.
This data underscores the growing contribution of new cultural formats to high-quality development, Ji noted.
He underscored the urgent strategic task of developing the culture-tech industry, noting its knowledge-intensive nature, extensive industrial chains, and significant potential for job creation.
Mao Junfa, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor of electronics and information engineering at Shenzhen University, stressed the importance of artificial intelligence in cultural development and fostering new productive forces of quality.
"The world is in the midst of the fourth technological revolution, driven by AI," Mao said. He predicts that AI will evolve from a technology into a science, developing alongside other sciences such as mathematics, physics, and philosophy, thereby driving human civilization's progress.
However, experts also cautioned that while AI presents opportunities for cultural creation, it poses challenges such as deepfakes, algorithmic echo chambers, and copyright ethics. Ushakov Dmitry Alekseevich, executive director of Rossiya Segodnya International Media Group in Russia, emphasized that AI cannot replace genuine friendship and trust between people.
"Technology helps us move faster, while culture helps us understand the direction we are heading," Alekseevich said at a forum on the global outreach of Chinese culture-tech industries, held on the sidelines of the event. "The role of modern media is to help people stay connected along the way."
Russia and China share immense potential for technological and cultural collaboration, he added, and media from both countries should work to strengthen cultural bonds through increased exchanges.
Peng Tao, deputy Party secretary and general manager of Hunan Malanshan Group, said the Malanshan Video Cultural and Creative Industrial Park in Changsha is transitioning from a content production base to a hub for cultural tech industries.
"Malanshan is ready to open its computing infrastructure, technology platforms, content scenarios, and global outreach services to our international partners, to share more Chinese culture-tech products with the world."
