Rejuvenating Henan By Developing Its Culture

Henan holds an incomparably favourable position in regard to the development and utilization of traditional cultural resources. It is a province rich in cultural relics, whose amount of overground cultural relics ranks second and that of underground cultural relics ranks first of all China's provincial administerial units. Of all China's top eight ancient capitals, four are in Henan, namely Kaifeng, Luoyang, Anyang and Zhengzhou, the number of which also ranks first of all China's provincial administerial units. Longmen Grottos in Luoyang and Yin ruins in Anyang are the two items of world cultural heritage in the province. Henan possesses 8 of all China's 102 historically and culturally famous cities. The xylographic new year paintings in Zhuxianzhen of Kaifeng, the Buddhist music in the Grand Xiangguo Temple of Kaifeng city, the Heluo tom-tom in Luoyang, Majie musical story-telling fair in Baofeng county and so on are renowned far and near. All these materially and non-materially cultural relics make up of Henan's basic resource and strategic resource as well to develop cultural industry in the province, making it a preponderant industry, becoming gold-lettered signboards of Henan's cultural industry and the tokens of Henan's soft strength.Cultural industry is a promising industry at present, an important element to evaluate the developing level of a country or an area's productive forces. With the deepening of reform and opening-up in the past few years, Henan's cultural industry has been working up and has been playing a more and more important role in the province's economical activities. However, the whole amount is relatively small in the province's GDP and the quantity and quality of the cultural production and service that it provides cannot satisfy the growing consuming demands of the masses and the consuming characteristics of multilayer, multiformity and diversification. It is rather disproportional compared to the expected enormous consuming market of Henan's rich cultural resources, favourable geographical advantages, and largeness of population. At the 8th CPC Congress of Henan province, the CPC Henan Provincial Committee put forward the thought of two spans—to realize the span from an economically-large province to an economically-strong province and the span from a grossly large province in cultural resources to a province strong in cultural industry. Thus to rejuvenate Henan by developing its cultural industry rose to one of the two tiptop stratagems to direct Henan's future development. Under the guidance of the scientific outlook on development, cultural construction will be going side by side with economical construction, political construction, environmental construction, and the construction of harmonious society, aiming at a still higher level of integrating economical development with social development. Rejuvenating Henan with culture and industrialization have shoulder to shoulder become the two legs on Henan's way to rise in the nation. We are confident that relying on its resplendent culture, Henan's realization of rise in central China is not a dream. Culture prosperous, Henan will be prosperous. Culture strong, Henan will be strong.