The National Cultural Trade Research Base of China was launched
on Thursday in Beijing, at the Communication University of China
(CUC).
Li Xin, a senior official in charge of external cultural
communication with the Ministry of Culture, said the research base,
based on the Cultural Trade Research Institute of CUC, is designed
to carry out relevant research and boost the external cultural
trade which is now at a relatively low level.
Li Huailiang, a professor with the Cultural Trade Research
Institute of CUC, said the base will provide policy-making
consultancy to the government and research reference to experts
nationwide, and cultivate high-level personnel in the field.
Yin Hong, deputy dean of School of Journalism and Communication
of Tsinghua
University, said at the launching ceremony that in the tide of
economic globalization, cultural product, with the unique value
embodied in its production, had greater importance than economic
trade in bilateral or multi-lateral trade.
China, as one of the four ancient civilizations, is "rich" in
terms of cultural resource, yet "poor" in cultural trade, Yin said.
There is a great potential in China to transform cultural resource
into products, which is also a great challenge.
"Therefore, the launching of the National Cultural Trade
Research Base is very important and necessary," Yin said.
He proposed that China should widely translate and introduce in
western advanced methods and theories, and strengthen case study
and information platform simultaneously.
Qi Shuyu, a scholar with the State Administrative College, said
the joint efforts of Culture Ministry and CUC to launch the
research base is a positive move, since to mobilize social
intelligence is a good way to improve administrative
efficiency.
He hoped the base could regularly release information on trade
status and policies in countries concerned and the world at large,
so as to avoid the purposeless production in the local cultural
sector. The base should also draw a working plan for the future
five to ten years.
According to the insiders, there is no specific statistic for
cultural trade yet in China's national economic statistics. At
present, the annual copyright trade volume of the United States is
more than US$500 billion, and the figure in China is only 100
billion yuan (around US$12 billion).
(Xinhua News Agency December 30, 2005)