A visitor takes photos of a "Black Myth: Wukong" bust at the 21st China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, May 23, 2025. (Xinhua/Liang Xu)
BEIJING, June 26 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry of Commerce, together with three other departments, has recently released the 2025-2026 catalogues of national key enterprises and projects of cultural exports, including over 400 enterprises and more than 120 projects.
Experts believe that China's cultural exports will further evolve towards high added value, strong penetration, and sustainable development, given technological iteration and favoring policies.
-- "New three" for cultural exports
The newly issued catalogue of key projects features a rich variety of cultural products such as animation, games, documentaries, textbooks, intangible cultural heritage crafts, dance dramas and so on.
China's cultural exports are shifting from the "old three" of making dumplings, practicing Tai Chi, and learning Chinese language, to the "new three" of online literature, web dramas, and video games, according to Meng Man, a professor at the School of History and Culture, Minzu University of China.
Low-cost, strong interaction, and sustainable development are the advantages of digital cultural trade, said Tang Xuan, an associate professor at the School of Television, Communication University of China. Compared to physical cultural products, digital cultural products are easier to replicate and update, making them naturally more suitable for cross-border communication, Tang noted.
With deepened cooperation between Chinese and international digital platforms, digital cultural products are developing innovative export models.
Chinese video and streaming service platform Youku has long been cooperating with Netflix in copyright, according to a representative with Youku. For instance, Chinese costume drama "The Double," which was listed as one of the key projects in the newly released catalogue, was scheduled to synchronize its broadcast with overseas partners from the early stages of production, reducing the time difference for domestic and overseas audiences and improving the timeliness of the program's overseas dissemination.
-- Moving toward "global narrative"
Tang believes that the localization of cultural products includes three stages, namely translation, constructing localized narratives, and forming intellectual property (IP) derivatives and local communities.
For Chinese cultural products to move toward generating a "global narrative", the approach may include combining customization with standardization through the production and translation process, as well as adopting localized operation and management based on data and intelligence.
Known for its intelligent translation and precise cultural adaptation, Chinese language service provider TransVan makes customized arrangements of professional translators for various projects based on the cultural background of the contents. The company's "localization translation for Chinese games going overseas" project is among the newly released catalogue for key projects.
Chinese marketing technology company BlueFocus Communication Group has been committed to promoting marketing upgrade through technological innovation.
Working with multiple large model companies, BlueFocus has launched overseas programmatic platform and artificial intelligence (AI) cloud-native growth engine under the AI paradigm in recent years, with the volume covering over 200 countries and regions, providing services for nearly a hundred overseas developers and brands.
-- Cultural enterprises expanding business overseas
The spatial agglomeration and resource sharing of industrial clusters are also strong guarantees for cultural products to have solid foundations.
In the recently released catalogue of key enterprises, six companies are from Suzhou Industrial Park in Suzhou City of east China's Jiangsu Province, among which five are gaming companies.
Suzhou Industrial Park has established a database for key cultural enterprises engaged in overseas business, offering financial incentives and subsidies for relevant companies to support cultural enterprises expanding their overseas business.
Local governments are also making increasing efforts to support cultural enterprises going abroad.
East China's Zhejiang Province recently released a series of measures on supporting games going overseas, encouraging gaming companies to strengthen cooperation with smart terminal manufacturers and to promote gaming contents and devices to go overseas together.
In north China's Tianjin Municipality, a metaverse innovation center recently began construction in the National Animation Industry Park in Binhai New Area to provide technical support for digital cultural contents to better explore the global market. (Edited by Yu Huichen with Xinhua Silk Road, yuhuichen@xinhua.org)
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