On May 29, the International Cultural Trade Forum of the Fourth CIFTIS and the International Cultural Innovation Conference was held at China International Convention Center. Vice Minister of Commerce Fang Aiqing attended it and delivered a speech.

Fang pointed out that the Chinese government attached great importance to foreign culture trade in recent years. China’s foreign culture trade and investment developed rapidly and presented the new features: Firstly, culture trade is a new highlight of foreign trade. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, the export of China’s cultural service in 2015 increased 37.2% compared with that of 2014. In the first quarter of 2016, the import and export of China’s cultural products reached RMB 107.4 billion, up 5% year on year. Among these, the export was RMB 90.6 billion, up 6.5% year on year. The proportion of the cultural products export in the total goods export was up from 2.7% to 3%. Secondly, “Culture plus Science and Technology” leads transformation and upgrading. The cultural enterprises deeply integrated with advanced science and technologies have become the major force in promoting the development of culture trade. The movie projection technologies developed independently by China entered into the overseas market successfully, marking that China’s foreign culture trade transformed from exporting goods and services to exporting core technologies and standards. Thirdly, the cross-field integration became obvious. The competition of culture trade has been not only the competition in products, but also the competition in the industrial chains and innovation abilities. The rise of movie and TV drama adapted from games, animations and network novels (IP drama) is an example of the cross-field integration of the culture industry. Many competent Chinese enterprises stepped into the culture industry and carried out overseas merger and acquisition overseas. Foreign culture trade and investment presented an obvious trend of cross-field integration.

Fang pointed out that with the economic growth and scientific and technological progress, the status and role of culture trade as the natural joint point of economic cooperation and cultural exchanges became even obvious. Developing culture trade is an important power to lead innovation, an important channel to promote the soft power of the country, an important carrier to strengthen the mutual understanding of the people of different countries and an important measure to expand the trade scale and optimize the trade structure.

Fang emphasized that during the 13th Five-Year Plan, we will deeply implement the spirit of the 18th National Congress and the 3rd, the 4th and the 5th Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and deeply implement the spirit of the important speeches of President Xi Jinping. We will stick to and implement the development concepts of “innovation, coordination, green, open and sharing”, coordinate the promotion of the vision and activities of “Belt and Road”, actively create development environment, bolster the trade pattern of “culture plus technology”, optimize the facilitation system of culture trade, promote the level of public service and further promote the development of foreign culture trade. The Chinese people are willing to, together with the people of the other countries, uphold the sails of trade and launch the ship of culture, and make contributions to the exchanges, creation and prosperity of the world culture.

Before the forum, Vice Minister Fang Aiqing made inspected the culture trade exhibition area of the fourth CIFTIS.