| With the progress of globalization and deepening of cultural exchanges, cultural industry has been growing rapidly, and cultural trade has become an increasingly influential factor in the global economy. As a new treasure creator in modern society, cultural trade is vital in promoting the innovation capability and economic growth, and in the end enhancing the comprehensive competitiveness of one country. As a matter of fact, cultural trade has already become an important economic driver in the leading exporting countries such as the USA and Japan. Hence it is now a crucial area for competition among countries in the world.During the past few decades, Chinese economy has made remarkable progress. The foreign trade area, in particular, grew speedily and China had become the third-largest export country with a total annual export volume of 1.15trillion U.S. dollars in 2004. In the area of cultural trade, China's cultural trade has seen drastic growth in total volume since the early 1990s. Despite the big advance in the latest years, cultural trade in China is still in an inferior position as compared with other fields of foreign trade. It makes up a small proportion in the overall foreign trade, and the development pace lags far behind the overall trade growth, largely due to the backwardness of the domestic cultural industry, which remains in a small-scale, low-end and inefficiency production stage. The total output volume of China's cultural industry is relatively small as compared to the developed countries such as the U.S. and Japan. What's more, it makes very small contribution to the national economic growth, whereas in developed countries cultural industries contribute a large proportion of the national economic growth.The global financial crisis began at the end of 2006 when the subprime crisis in the USA gradually spread to the rest of the world. It unmasked the problems of traditional development modes and triggered worldwide recessions in various economic fields. Although the cultural industry has been inevitably confronted with serious problems such as investment withdrawal, market shrinkage, and demand decline, it has a self-restoring capacity as can be explained by the lipstick effect theory. What is more, the financial crisis hit the main exporters of cultural product heavily, causing changes in the international cultural market. This gives opportunities for the less-developed cultural export countries like China to catch up with the leading countries. As time goes, thanks to the self-recovery policies and regulations in the impacted countries, together with the great effort of world economy organizations, the financial crisis and economy recession eased worldwide and the world economy has entered a relatively steady development period, or what we call the post-crisis era. In the post-crisis era, the rebalance in the world's economic power provides more opportunities for the less-developed ones than before to participate in the international competition.In the cultural trade area, the international market is less intensified with influence of the industrialized countries. As a developing country, China should on the one hand take advantages of the external opportunities including capital and talent inflow to develop its cultural industry; on the other hand, China need to adopt various measures to improve the inner environment, for instance, optimize the export structure of cultural products, lessen government regulation and allow more market control over the cultural industry, so as to nourish and accelerate the upgrading of cultural industry, and then enhance Chinese cultural trade in the world market.This paper is aimed at clarifying the current situation of Chinese cultural trade and cultural industry based on the analysis of both challenges and opportunities the financial crisis has brought around. There are seven chapters in the paper. Chapterl is the introduction of the background information of the paper, and chapter2 brings in basic definitions of cultural trade and cultural industry, and related theories such as comparative advantages, cultural discount and the lipstick theory. Chapter3 consists of two aspects:the characteristics of international cultural trade and cultural industries before the financial crisis, and the achievements as well as drawbacks in Chinese cultural trade and cultural industry before the financial crisis. Chapter4 begins with the background information of the financial crisis, and then introduces the impact of the financial crisis on the international cultural trade, as well as the influence on global cultural industries. Chapter5 sets out to expound the impact of the financial turmoil on Chinese cultural trade and cultural industry. On the basis of both timely analysis of the early-stage impact and the spreading stage, and segmental analysis of the pillar cultural sectors such as news publishing, network services, the paper listed main threats and opportunities for Chinese cultural industry during the financial crisis. With reference to success experience of the USA and South Korea during the Great Depression and 1997 Asian financial turmoil, Chapter6 brings forward suggestions regarding domestic adjustments for Chinese cultural industry and cultural enterprises in the post-financial-crisis era. Chapter7 is the conclusion of the paper. Based on the above analysis, it is concluded that the current financial crisis brings more opportunities than challenges to China's cultural trade, and Chinese cultural enterprises should take advantage of the external environment to strengthen China's comprehensive power in this post-crisis era. |
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