The National Cultural Trade Research Base of China was launched on Thursday in Beijing, at the Communication University of China (CUC).

 

Li Xin, a senior official in charge of external cultural communication with the Ministry of Culture, said the research base, based on the Cultural Trade Research Institute of CUC, is designed to carry out relevant research and boost the external cultural trade which is now at a relatively low level.

 

Li Huailiang, a professor with the Cultural Trade Research Institute of CUC, said the base will provide policy-making consultancy to the government and research reference to experts nationwide, and cultivate high-level personnel in the field.

 

Yin Hong, deputy dean of School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University, said at the launching ceremony that in the tide of economic globalization, cultural product, with the unique value embodied in its production, had greater importance than economic trade in bilateral or multi-lateral trade.

 

China, as one of the four ancient civilizations, is "rich" in terms of cultural resource, yet "poor" in cultural trade, Yin said. There is a great potential in China to transform cultural resource into products, which is also a great challenge.

 

"Therefore, the launching of the National Cultural Trade Research Base is very important and necessary," Yin said.

 

He proposed that China should widely translate and introduce in western advanced methods and theories, and strengthen case study and information platform simultaneously.

 

Qi Shuyu, a scholar with the State Administrative College, said the joint efforts of Culture Ministry and CUC to launch the research base is a positive move, since to mobilize social intelligence is a good way to improve administrative efficiency.

 

He hoped the base could regularly release information on trade status and policies in countries concerned and the world at large, so as to avoid the purposeless production in the local cultural sector. The base should also draw a working plan for the future five to ten years.

 

According to the insiders, there is no specific statistic for cultural trade yet in China's national economic statistics. At present, the annual copyright trade volume of the United States is more than US$500 billion, and the figure in China is only 100 billion yuan (around US$12 billion).

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 30, 2005)