The Development Of Cultural Industries In Western Countries: A Comparative Study

The emergence and rise of the contemporary cultural industries reflects the basic direction of evolution from the industrial age to the post-industrial age in some countries, especially in those western developed countries. As the sunrise industry in the 21st century, the cultural industries have become a new growth sector in the global economy, and even become the pillar industry of the national economy in some developed countries. In recent years, the whole world has formed an overall trend for the prosperous development of the cultural industries.After 30 years development since the opening and reform, China has entered into a turning period, in which the growth mode is changing from traditional resource consumption, investment driven and extensive growth pattern into resource saving, innovation impulse and endogenous growth pattern. The cultural industries have great correlated effects, so that it can promote industrial restructuring and upgrading. Vigorously developing the cultural industries, through advantage of later comer, is aiming at promoting the industrial structure optimization, strengthening the national cultural competitiveness, and enhancing the cultural soft power, which are important contents of Chinese culture construction and strategic goals for economic society development. Hence, it has become an urgent task to learn the foreign advanced experience and combine it with our national conditions to accelerate the development of cultural industries.In view of above, this dissertation chooses to make a comparative study on western countries'cultural industries development and explores the current situation, the industries'basic facts, function, market mechanism, industrial policy and competiveness in global cultural industries'development waves, then concludes the key experiences to provide theoretical instruction and experience reference for Chinese cultural industries'development.With an approach of "Generalizing-Analyzing-Generalizing", this dissertation first makes a general introduction of the global cultural industries as a logic start, then make analysis and comparison on the specific features and contents, summarize and elaborate the experience of foreign cultural industries and finally focus on the strategy and policy for Chinese cultural industries. This dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part consists of chapter 1 and chapter 2. As the "Introduction", the Chapter 1 first explains the background and significance of this topic, then discusses the relationships and differences between the concepts of culture, cultural industries, copyright industries, creative industries etc, and finally defines the scope of "cultural industries", which establishes the theoretical basis for the whole dissertation. The Chapter 2 demonstrates the panorama of global cultural industries, including the emergence and rise of foreign cultural industries, the analysis of developing models and types of foreign cultural industries, and the forecasting the developing orientation of foreign cultural industries.The second part, comprising chapter 3-7, focuses on the comparative study of major western countries'cultural industries in terms of status, function, market mechanism, industrial policy and competiveness.The Chapter 3 discusses the status of cultural industries in major western countries. With a great deal of statistical materials, the dissertation describes the basic facts and developing trend of current cultural industries in each country selected, especially analyzes and compares the key sectors like movie, press, newspapers, and animation in detail. On the one hand, it deeply generalizes the current developing situation of different cultural industries sectors in different countries; on the other hand, it wholly demonstrates the basic status of different cultural industrial sectors in the western countries.The Chapter 4 analyzes the function of cultural industries in major western countries with respects of economy, politics, and society development. The economic function embodies contributions to GDP and employment. The political function embodies the cultural hegemony and ideological model. The social influence of cultural industries embodies the culture communication and impacting degree to receivers. On the bases above, it makes a comparative analysis on economic functions, politic functions, and social influence of cultural industries in the western countries.The Chapter 5 discusses the market mechanism of cultural industries in major western countries, and classifies the main participants of cultural markets, and explains the organization manners, production and sales channels in the market operation by studying on different cultural industrial sectors. Through comparative study, it is found that most famous cultural companies in the world choose the group strategy, the brand strategy, the Blue Ocean strategy, or the Long Tail strategy, which attained competitive edges for those companies in terms of strategic developing dimension.The Chapter 6 focuses on analyzing the cultural industries'policies in major western countries. By collection and research, it makes many kinds of policies including national strategy, regulation bodies, legislation, and preferential taxation policy, talents education policy and trade policy, etc.The Chapter 7 evaluates the competitiveness of cultural industries in major western countries. By setting up an evaluation model of cultural industries' competiveness on basis of comparative advantage theory and competitive advantage theory, it discusses the connotation of cultural industries'competiveness and builds up a tentative evaluation indexes system, according to which, it makes an initial evaluation on Chinese cultural industries' competitiveness.The part 3 contains only chapter 8, which abstracts the overseas experiences of cultural industries development, and on this situation, it puts forward the argumentum on the policy-making of Chinese cultural industries. The dissertation believes that western countries'cultural industries have complete legislations, smooth government regulating system, multi-channels'investment, higher cultural and technological contents, global developing strategy and sound talents training system, etc. These western cultural industries' policies and regulating model are naturally formed under the market economy institution, which is quite different from the Chinese institutional environment. With both a universal analysis of western practice and experiences, and a comprehensive analysis of Chinese cultural industries' situation and problems, the dissertation finally lays out the developing orientation for Chinese cultural industries and puts forwards the related policy-making recommendations on how to promote Chinese cultural industries' development.