China's digital culture sector set for stronger growth in 5G era: report

BEIJING - China's digital culture sector is expected to see robust expansion as new-generation technologies become powerful tools to create and promote cultural products and services, an industrial report showed.

The commercial use of the 5G wireless network and applications of big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other state-of-the-art technologies are expected to bring significant changes to the digital culture sector, according to the Digital Culture Industry Trends Report released on the weekend by the Development Research Center of the State Council, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and Tencent Research.

China's culture sector has been expanding steadily in recent years. The total revenue of the culture sector and related businesses hit 4.06 trillion yuan ($588 billion) in the first half of the year, up 7.9 percent year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Among the sector, Internet advertising, Internet-based entertainment, digital publications, wearable devices and virtual reality products posted a robust H1 revenue expansion of above 20 percent.

The report showed that while the content-based consumer Internet remains the focus of digital culture providers, many market players are expanding into other industries such as tourism and sports, evidenced by the fast growth of smart tourism and e-sports.

"The integration with other industries will offer important growth for the digital culture sector. The market might be worth over 80 trillion yuan," said Tencent vice president Cheng Wu.

While consolidating domestic market shares, leading industrial players including Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance are seeking greater overseas presence by means of investment in foreign counterparts as well as exporting domestic products and co-production with global partners.

Earlier this year, China's second highest-grossing movie of all time "The Wandering Earth," a sci-fi blockbuster backed by Tencent Pictures, also became one of the most popular Chinese movies overseas.

It's a natural process for Chinese cultural products to go global, but will also be a long journey, said Zhang Xiaoming, a senior culture researcher with CASS. "A global perspective and way of story-telling are needed to engage overseas customers."