Cultural and creative industry debuts at Beijing expo

The annual China Beijing International Fair for Trade in Services, taking place May 28-30 in Beijing, will host 27 companies in the culture and creativity industry, for the first time, according to one of the organizers, on April 27. 

Huang Junxiong, director of Beijing's State-owned Cultural Assets Supervision and Administration Office, which helped organize the fair, said, "With Beijing government's constant encouragement in 'going global', our cultural and creative sector has experienced fast growth over the past few years. Revenues were 198 billion yuan ($30.5 billion) in 2011, then 279 billion yuan in 2014, and last year, 307 billion yuan, with exports worth roughly $3 billion." 

Huang was referring to the Chinese president, Xi Jinping's comment in Beijing two years ago, about city's strategic position and function as a national culture center, then added that the cultural and creative industry has become its second largest economic pillar, with the greatest number of export-oriented cultural companies and projects nationwide, particularly in film, animation and computer-games, and book copyrights. 

In a related comment, one representative of the Beijing Huangjiang Culture Development Co, which is closely linked to the Olympics, said that the Beijing fair attracts service industry suppliers from all over the world, and they're looking forward to finding partners in research, design, manufacture and retail for their licensed Olympic games products and other special occasions.