Zhang Xiaoming

Researcher of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

and Vice Director of China National Center for Culture Studies

Member of the Advisory Committee of ICCSD

Culture Supports a Carbon-Neutral and Equitable Recovery 

In the process of achieving carbon neutrality, the connotations and extension of China's cultural industries have witnessed great changes. In my view, cultural industries can truly contribute to sustainable development and a carbon-neutral and equitable recovery. Such industries feature less energy consumption and environmental pollution. Moreover, impacted by multiple factors, the concept of green and low-carbon development has become increasingly internalized in the industries, showing a significant development trend conducive to realizing carbon neutrality.

The cultural tourism industry has entered a new stage of development. Culture is the core resource of promoting the upgrading and transformation of the tourism industry, and tourism is an important medium of cultural communication. According to relevant studies, the carbon emission of transportation in tourism accounts for 60% to 70% of the total, the carbon emission of the lodging industry accounts for more than 20% of the total, and the energy consumption of air conditioning, water heating, lighting and electromechanics make up about 80% to 90% of that of hotels. Such data show that the hardware construction stage of China's tourism industry has basically come to an end, followed by a new stage of both software and hardware construction when software development can even replace hardware development. Cultural tourism should focus on strengthening the content construction of tourism and improving tourism benefits. From the perspective of carbon emission reduction, the low-carbon development path of the cultural tourism industry is clearly seen as a necessity.

Cultural industries have basically completed a digital transformation. After more than 20 years of cultivation, China has initially established a comprehensive cultural industry system. The last decade is a critical period for China's cultural industries to realize the digital transformation on a large scale. According to the Digital Culture Industry Trends Report released by the Development Research Center of the State Council, the added value of China's digital culture industry reached CNY 1.03 trillion to CNY 1.19 trillion in 2017, accounting for 34% of the total added value of culture and related industries in the same year. The report estimates that the digital culture industry will contribute more than 70% of the added value of China's cultural industries. These data clearly show that China's cultural industries and digital technology-related industries have registered robust growth. Moreover, cultural industries have basically completed the digital transformation, and industrial development is shifting from scale expansion to innovation-driven growth.

Culture, science and technology see accelerated integration. Amidst the pandemic, the integration of cultural industries and digital technologies has been remarkably accelerated, speeding up the realization of carbon neutrality. In general, the scale of cultural industries has been impacted by the epidemic, and a large number of offline cultural activities related to tourism and entertainment have been suspended or forced to be held online. However, some new business forms and models that cater to diversified and personalized consumer demands are still thriving. In terms of the distribution of industries, the data in 2021 show that the four major low-carbon cultural industries, namely news & information service, creative design service, cultural consumption terminal production, and content creation & production, have created a new "green" engine for the development of cultural industries by virtue of their rapid growth.

Equity in sustainable development cannot be ignored. John Maynard Keynes warned a century ago: As the human society is rapidly developing, are new jobs being created at a pace matched by the demise of old ones? What will be the appearance of the new social equity problem and how will it be solved? The theory of economic social equity calls on us to consider more employment issues and job availability when making cultural industry policies, rather than simply using GDP economic indicators to measure the scale of cultural industries.

The Role of Cultural Industries in Cross-Cultural Communication and Enhancing Cultural Diversity

As mentioned before, the epidemic has accelerated the digital transformation of cultural industries and seriously affected people's offline social activities. Countries implement different forms of social distancing policies, resulting in the online transfer of numerous social needs of the public. Accordingly, the Internet can play a more positive role as a medium transcending space, providing the public with more opportunities for cross-cultural communication. The new forms and models of digital culture industry greatly facilitate the online holding of public entertainment and cultural consumption activities. For example, plenty of online literary works are published on various Chinese Internet platforms every year. Tencent's platform alone has more than eight million online writers publishing online novels, creating tens of millions of works every year. Regarding film and television works, eight or nine of the top 10 are often adapted from online literary novels. In international cultural industries, Chinese web novels have become a new "name card" for Chinese culture to go global.

On the negative side, social media are increasingly affecting information acquisition and influencing people's daily life more deeply. Big data algorithms build information cocoons to dominate people's cognition of the world by constantly pushing personalized pop-ups, and the opportunities to form cultural consensus between each other are gradually reduced. The ready availability and free flow of information do not eliminate stereotypes and misconceptions, but reinforce pre-existing positions. The easier it is for people to group together on social networks, the easier it is to reinforce stereotypes and form the "Information Isolated Island". The Internet has woven the whole world into the same web, and people of different cultures, civilizations and stages of development live in the same virtual space, which is an unprecedented scene in human society. We need to adopt a dialectical view based on different perspectives and dimensions, when it comes to whether the Internet and digital culture industry strengthen or hinder communication and play a positive or negative role in cross-cultural communication.