High-Level Forum on Culture and Finance Cooperation Organized at the 2020 Maritime Silk Road Culture and Tourism Expo

On September 25, the 2020 Maritime Silk Road Culture and Tourism Expo opened in Ningbo, China. As a key part of this Expo, the High-Level Forum on Culture and Finance Cooperation was held on the afternoon of September 24. The Forum was hosted by the Publicity Department of CPC Ningbo Municipal Committee and Ningbo Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television and Tourism, and organized by Guangming Daily Newspaper. In 2019, Ningbo became one of the two cities nationwide to build a National Demonstration Zone for Culture-Finance Integration under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the People’s Bank of China and the Ministry of Finance. The Forum, under the theme of “New Technology, New Business Form, New Development”, invited representatives from cultural enterprises, investment organizations and experts from related fields to discuss about Ningbo’s success experience in culture-finance integration, delve into new questions arising in the current stage, design new approaches for integrated development of culture and finance in the 14th-Five-Year-Plan period and contribute new ideas to high-quality development of the country’s cultural industry.

Lin Daji, Deputy Director of the Publicity Department and Head of Cyberspace Information Office of CPC Ningbo Municipal Committee attended the forum and said in his speech that culture-finance integration is a systematic project, and this project has to be sustained after the pandemic. Ningbo will continue following the guideline of new development concepts, and advance organizational, product and mechanism innovation in culture-finance integration while exploring more flexible, sustainable integration models so that parallel development of culture and finance can be achieved, and that the National Demonstration Zone for Culture-Finance Integration can play a demonstrative role in this aspect.

As a major newspaper in thoughts and culture, Guangming Daily has intensified its presence in the cultural industry and has cooperated with various localities in launching a series of social activities. Among them, the selection of “Person of the Year for China’s Cultural Industry” has been held for seven consecutive years, which has become the vane of the industry and helped establish the authority and influence of Guangming Daily in the cultural industry.

Lu Xiangao, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Guangming Daily, introduced in his speech that in March this year, in order to help small, medium and micro cultural enterprises to resume work and production and overcome difficulties, Guangming Daily launched the “Small, Medium and Micro Cultural Enterprise Assistance Program” in conjunction with a number of institutions. The program attracted funding applications from nearly 1,000 culture enterprises, and built a culture-finance “bridge” by pulling resources from multiple channels. Lu Xingao pointed out that culture-finance cooperation still has a long way to go, but it must support high-quality projects, promote integrity and innovation, serve the overall national economic development, and promote the domestic circulation of the economy. At the same time, it must align itself to new trends of technology and cultivate new forms of culture-related technology.

Six industrial experts at the forum shared their opinions through a roundtable dialogue centering on “New Technology, New Business Form, and New Development”. They discussed Ningbo’s experience advancing regional development of culture-finance integration and explored some new financial models for cultural development. Through a roadshow, five excellent industrial representatives shared how to engage stakeholders and build a new ecosystem for the cultural industry through joint innovation. Experts attending the forum also diagnosed the actual problems and difficulties arising in fundraising and offered their proposals. Since the National Demonstration Zone for Culture-Finance Integration was established in Ningbo in 2014, the city has focused on improving “policies, systems, platforms and services”. Ningbo has since set up the Agriculture Bank of China’s Ningbo Branch for Culturally Creative Industry, the Cultural Industry Credit Risk Pool, the “Culturally Creative Industry Board” under the Regional Equity Exchange Center, the Cultural Industry Investment Fund, Culture Foundation, Creation Workshop, Culture-Tourism-Finance Service Center and the Collaborative Innovation Base within the Demonstration Zone, all of which represent Ningbo’s exploration in building a culture-finance supply chain with regional characteristics in order to effectively advance the high-quality development of the city’s cultural and tourism industry. According to statistics, in 2019, Ningbo’s culturally creative industry and tourism industry accounted for 7.64% and 7.27% of the city’s GDP, respectively.