International Comparison Of Cultural Service Trade Promotion Policies

As an emerging domain of the service industry,cultural service industry proves to be the main source of added value of the service sector for various countries by virtue of a minor elasticity of consumption substitution and high industrial additional values.Along with the constantly accelerating process of globalization,the industrial structure of countries around the world has been upgraded.Trade in cultural services has become a new developing field of trade.In 2019,China’s import and export volume of personal,cultural and entertainment services totaled 5.28 billion dollars;and the total export and import of intellectual property use fee was 41.2 billion dollars.The fast development of trade in cultural services is gradually becoming the norm.Compared with the huge trade market of cultural services in developed countries,there are still many problems in China’s trade in cultural services,such as large trade deficit,slump international competitiveness and the dominance of inter-industry trade,which does not match with the status of a cultural power.In today’s world prevailed with Japanese and Korean waves,as well as Hollywood movies,Chinese culture has always been so isolated that it is difficult to set a trend.Because of the strong regional characteristics of culture,cultural value will suffer losses due to cultural differences occurred in the process of overseas trade.Therefore,it is necessary for the government to formulate supportive policies for the standardization and management of corresponding purposes.Nowadays,the majority of studies in cultural service trade are placed under the theoretical framework of public administration with qualitative and quantitative analysis as the main research methods.Qualitative analysis covers index analysis and empirical analysis.Yet there is a great difference in the conclusions obtained by quantitative analysis.The small number of sample nations,insufficient effective data and inconsistent statistic caliber eventually resulted in a large deviation in the results.Considering the deficiency of quantitative analysis,qualitative analysis is adopted as the main method in this paper.The impact of policy differences among the countries on their own cultural service trade will be explored from the perspective of cultural service trade policies with strong availability,as well as accurate and reliable sources.In the first place,the transmission mechanism and effect of the promotion policy on trade in cultural services are put into analysis.The author not only classified the different trade-promoting cultural service policies into government-oriented,government-dominant,neutral,market-dominant and market-oriented policies basedon different leading forces,but also included various countries into the five classifications above according to the nature of their trade-promoting policies.Then the analysis is carried out on the transmission mechanism and effect of the trade-promoting cultural service policies from the theoretical viewpoint.There are mainly three types of trade policies of cultural services,namely circumstantial type,supply type and demand type.Circumstantial policies refer to the policies laid down by the government to impact upon the trade environment of cultural services and thus upon trade development;the supply policies are formulated from the angle of supply by the government to provide resources for cultural development,expand supply for cultural elements,and thus promote cultural service trade;the demand policies are aimed at broadening cultural demands form the angle of demand,reducing market uncertainty,and stabilizing the market of cultural service.Generally speaking,a mixture of the three types above is applied by most countries.Cultural service trade policies cultivate and develop trade in cultural services through three routes,namely theme fostering,resource supply and environmental optimization.This study took China as an example to analyze the benefits of the trade-promoting cultural service policies afterwards.The measures for the economic benefit analysis cover the trade growth effect,trade balance effect and the optimization effect of trade structure brought by cultural service trade policies.The implementation of trade-promoting cultural service policies in China has significantly enhanced the total import and export of the trade in cultural services.However,the total amount of exports is far less than that of imports.And the total volume of cultural service trade in China’s total trade volume is relatively flat.This indicates that the current trade policy of China has not achieved the intended effect.The added value of cultural industry and labor productivity are used to evaluate industrial benefits.The added value of cultural service industry accounts for half of the added value of the cultural industry with a yearly increasing fixed investment.The number of employees and production efficiency in cultural service industry has also increased substantially.Currently speaking,the trade-promoting cultural service policies of China have witnessed explicit industrial benefits.As for social benefits,this study pays more attention to cultural attributes and the subjective feelings of consumers,which are measures with two indexes,namely degree and sphere of cultural impact.The results show that Chinese cultural services have little influence on foreign consumers.Yet the sphere of social influence is constantly expanding due to the implementation of the “Belt andRoad Initiative”.Since cultural security is another basis for a country to formulate policies on cultural trade,this study selects international market share,international competitiveness and explicit comparative advantage index to evaluate the effect of policies on the protection of domestic culture.The results show that China’s international market share of cultural services is very low,the international competitiveness is weak and the competitive disadvantage is obvious.In the second place,the representative industries of major trading countries in cultural services including the USA,Japan,South Korea,France and the UK,etc.,are selected to summarize and analyze the policies adopted by these countries to promote their export of distinctive cultural services.As for the industry support policies for film,television and animation industry,the USA lays more stress upon the construction of a complete legal and taxation system and the preparation of a relaxed environment of competition to help their domestic industry giants become international magnates.With the industry giants driving the industry agglomeration and upgrading the industry scale,the trade promotion policy is thus expanded in the mode of industry globalization on the basis of a certain industrial scale;Japanese anime is recognized by the world for its superb production technology,unique character images and bright values.The reason why Japanese anime is able to occupy such a large share of the world market shall attribute to the all-round policy promotion from their domestic system to export;the prosperous authorized trade in works of art of France is inseparable from their domestic cultural and art system,the complete cultural service facilities,the popularization of art appreciation and the outwardly domineering “Cultural Exception” measures;the development of the authorized art industry of the UK is inseparable from the strict and orderly autonomy of the auction industry.Industry autonomy is an essential prerequisite and guarantee for the healthy development of artwork authorization.In addition,the protection for consumers by the domestic laws of the UK has given rise to the “limited liability clause” of the auction industry,which provides a favorable legal environment for the authorization of artworks with detailed terms and conditions.It is thus clear that the formulation of cultural service trade policies by the developed countries in cultural trade is realized from several perspectives,including trade environment optimization,policy and fiscal support,cultivation of competitive forces and maintenance of domestic culture,so as to assist the expansion of their own culture while protecting it from the invasion of foreign culture.In the third place,this study selects the emerging digital cultural service trade as a special study based on the current development of cultural service trade.It focuses on the analysis in the current situation and trend of the United States and the European Union in policy formulation of digital cultural trade and found that as a digital culture power,the United States pursues free trade policy;while the European Union,which values cultural protection,intends to erect cultural trade barriers through “digital tax”.The policies of digital cultural service trade in various countries are in the middle of diverging,which not only aggravated the friction of international cultural service trade,but confined the development of international digital cultural service trade.Since the definition and content of trade in cultural services of various countries have not been unified,there is a severe difference in the statistics of cultural service trade.This paper summarized the classification of cultural services and statistic rules of the major international organizations and countries,analyzed the gap of data statistics between China and the United States and the difference in the development level of cultural service trade resulted from the gap,and evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of the statistic methods.Then,the study analyzes the specific phenomena related to cultural service trade.Since the dual nature,culture and product,of cultural service trade,are provided with distinctive features in international trade,such as the coexistence of “cultural exception” and “cultural freedom”,as well as the phenomena of “increment of culture” and “cultural discount”,this study will focus on the analysis in not only the phenomena and causes of cultural service trade,including “cultural freedom” and“cultural exception”,as well as “increment of culture” and “cultural discount”,but also the special measures adopted by international trade organizations in response to the “special circumstances” occurred in the process of cultural service trade.In the end,this paper puts forward suggestions on improving policy formulation from the following seven aspects according to the research conclusion and the current situation of the development of China’s cultural service trade.Firstly,it is necessary to focus on the export of cultural services with huge cultural discount;secondly,we shall use the cultural form that is familiar to foreign audience to reduce “cultural discount”;thirdly,it is necessary to combine localization and globalization to enable foreigners to comprehend and be attracted by our culture,so as to stimulate consumption in cultural services;fourthly,we need to target the cultural affinity markets and seek the neighboring countries with similar languages as main export markets;in the fifthplace,it is necessary to learn from international policies on cultural trade and improve relevant domestic legislation to reduce trade frictions;sixthly,we shall attach importance to national cultural demand and cultural security,and improve them from multiple aspects including market,education and social welfare,as well as establish national consciousness in cultural security;seventhly,it is necessary to push forward the improvement of WTO rules related to trade in cultural services and establish long-term strategic cultural cooperative relations by virtue of bilateral or multilateral cultural cooperation.