Strong growth in the creative industry

The creative industry has become a strategic growth point in Guangdong due to planning and policy support from the local government, an official said.

"This is evident not only in scale, but also in industrial structure, quality, profits and competitiveness," Lai Bin, deputy director-general of the provincial publicity department, told Economic Daily.

Press and publications, broadcasting and TV, equipment manufacturing and culture-related tourism have all become advantageous industrial clusters, he said.

Its digital publications, animation, cartoons and online games lead the nation in annual production value, Lai added.

He said the added value of the sector has maintained more than 12 percent annual growth in the past few years to reach 270.65 billion yuan ($44.4 billion) in 2012, 4.74 percent of the province's GDP.

The industrial output by digital publications along with the combined animations, cartoons and online games both topped 30 billion yuan in 2012.

The official attributed prosperity in the industry to the province's realistic planning and policies for the sector.

Guangdong has set up 130 industrial parks for the sector that are home to more than 20,000 enterprises while lowering their taxes by a combined 1 billion yuan.

Luo Tianhao, a researcher with the scientific and technological quality center of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, said Guangdong's hefty financial support together with technological development also explains why the creative industry has developed so rapidly.

Guangdong's budget for the development of culture-related projects is more than 25 billion yuan from 2011 to 2015, reliable sources said.

And technological advancement has laid a solid foundation for future growth and a high-end cultural industry, the researcher said.

zhanlisheng@chinadaily.com.cn