The concerns which have been raised over the development of China's culture industry recently are not unreasonable.

Development in the culture industry clearly lags far behind the rapid growth of the nation's other industries.

In other nations cultural exports are important parts of the export economy culture products became the second largest export category in the United States as early as 1998, only behind the aerospace industry.

In the United Kingdom, cultural products were already the second largest in terms of production value in the 1930s.

In Asia, South Korea sought to revive its economy by emphasizing culture industry development, after being hit hard by the financial crisis of the 1990s. Guided by a strategy of "culture-based statehood," the country's culture industry soon swept through neighbouring countries and regions like a typhoon.

As for China, despite rapid development in recent years, the culture industry is still far from being able to meet domestic demands, and it accounts for only a tiny portion of the nation's GDP.

There is no real chance of Chinese cultural products grabbing a piece of the world market for the time being. The globalization of the culture market is an undeniable and irresistible trend whether we like it or not.

There are two reasons behind this reality. Firstly, once culture becomes an industry and when it becomes part of such economic chains as capital injection, production and logistics, it is no longer a cultural phenomenon, but a cultural economic one.

The other reason is that the culture industry is a broad concept, including many aspects that form the world's cultural heritage, such as skills, entertainment and history (particularly archaeology).

Apparently, this culture industry, built on cultural aspects shared by the whole human race, already possesses the potential and tendency for globalization. And the advent of the information technology age, as well as the globalization of economics, has only accelerated this tendency. Now, how can we turn China's culture industry from a weakling into a major power?

Admitted, nothing can be done without capital injection. Then there is policy support, which includes incentives, especially capital lured from the community with tax-related favours.

Adequate "protection" is another must. An irresistible trend during the globalization of culture market is that no country is naive enough to believe it is safe to give up self-preservation right away.

In fact, the government has already taken concrete steps in the three "musts" mentioned above. Be it State-sponsored selection of top drama productions nationwide, organizing big events such "China Year" cultural exchanges overseas or securing prime-time broadcast slots for domestic film and TV features, they all reflect the enthusiasm of the government to boosting the country's culture industry development.

Especially noteworthy is the recent implementation of a set of national directives for reforms during the 11th Five Year Plan period (2006-2010), which show even more strongly China's desire to join the ranks of major culture industry powers as soon as possible.

However, in order to develop China's culture industry, there is an even greater "obstacle" that must be overcome apart from those in capital injection, policy and system. That is the conceptual barrier rooted deep in our minds.

It is first the result of a one-sided, mechanical and narrow-minded understanding of the saying "nationality is universality" that has made it very difficult for China's culture industry to enter overseas markets. The true meaning of "no universality without nationality" is that national characteristics should be kept intact and cultural development brooks no national nihilism.

We should help the rest of the world learn about and understand China while spreading our national culture worldwide.

But, today it seems the meaning of this saying has been altered somehow to serve as an excuse for people who prefer shutting themselves off to the outside world, rejecting good foreign culture and indulging in narcissism and denial.

As a matter of fact, this saying conveys a double edged idea one side is that only good national culture that can improve human communication, and progress is universal. The rotten traditions and bad habits left over by past societies are national, but can never be universal. The other side of the idea is that there is nothing wrong in accepting the good achievements of other civilizations and trying to make them part of China's own.

Yet another conceptual obstacle constraining China's culture industry development is that we have not to date been fully aware of the missing emphasis on humanity and humanism in Chinese culture, which has led to a shortage of human-centric creations.

It is a historical fact that thousands of years of feudalistic authoritarianism have stifled the promotion of individual personality. The psychological shadow cast on Chinese people by the Soviet-style, highly-centralised planned economy of the last century have put Chinese culture in a developmental straight jacket.

Its most notable characteristic is ignoring humanity and humanism. As everyone knows, the most progressive of all human traits, as opposed to animal instincts, is creativity.

When Chinese culture finally discarded the paintings, posters, films and books designed purely for instruction-oriented propaganda, we suddenly found ourselves totally ignorant about how to present the past, present and future of the Chinese nation in a new light, especially in a humanitarian light.

This is the question China's culture industry needs to answer. Being human-centric is both the industry's goal and the path for its development. And to be human-centric no doubt means we must respect the natural attributes of human beings and improve our social attributes.

As for the culture industry, the harmony it helps to achieve can only be based on human creativity, diversity and open-mindedness.

The key to China's culture industry catching up with the world leaders lies in nurturing human creativity, not in organization, motivation and management.

The author is a researcher from the China Foundation for International & Strategic Studies.

(China Daily 09/16/2006 page4)