Culture, commerce and innovation in China

Abstract

This article examines the recent interest in creativity within China. It identifies a desire on the part of China’s cultural intellectuals and cadres to exploit the economic benefits of contemporary cultural markets and to be part of a new growth phenomenon called the “creative economy”. The way to make China competitive appears to be through the clustering of cultural and creative workers. Serving as a pretext for a cultural renaissance, the plural concept of the creative industries has become fashionable. What this allows is a reshaped management of the field of cultural production, usually among government officials and business speculators, in the guise of providing the infrastructural conditions for creativity. The paper argues moreover that real innovation is overlooked in the rush to demonstrate market success.