"Modern culture industry, involving media, tourism, entertainment, advertisement, sports and education, has been regarded as a green industrial sector with great potential in the world," Li Pengcheng, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) said.

Taking advantage of high-tech advances, especially digital information technology, developed countries have pulled ahead of China in this field.

According to official statistics, output value of the world's top 50 media and entertainment companies, including Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, News Corporation, Sony and Universal, shared more than 95 percent of the international culture market as a whole.

However, so far, there is no such multinational culture enterprise in China, for most of China's culture units were managed by governmental departments at all levels for so many years, and the newly established culture enterprises are in their fledging stage.

After China becomes a member of the WTO, the world's largest economic club, an aggressive influx of foreign culture enterprises and their products will inevitably deal a blow to the relatively fragile Chinese ones.

"The introduction of foreign culture products, if allowed to overwhelm the Chinese market, will not only affect the domestic culture industry, but also influence the Chinese outlook of cultural value," said Zhang Jiangang, researcher with CASS.

Meanwhile, Zhang acknowledged that it is also possible that the inflow of high-quality foreign culture products may be a stimulant for Chinese engaged in the culture industry.

Experts believed that the contradiction between the shortage of China-made high-quality culture products and people's ever-increasing spiritual demand is one of the key issues perplexing China's culture industry, which leaves market space for foreigners.

After China fully opens its culture sector to the outside world, overseas investors will enter the market through purchasing and merging Chinese culture enterprises or becoming shareholders in those companies, which means that the property rights of some traditional culture products may flow into foreign-owned companies.

"Different from natural resources, a great deal of cultural resources with great market potential have not been exploited by us, which implies that foreign investors might obtain the treasures at very low prices," Zhang said.

Mature foreign culture companies were adept to combine their own styles with the local ones to permeate the market; however, Chinese companies deliberately popularized their traditional culture resources.

Since China's culture industry is just starting to grow, experts, scholars and governmental officers have been urged to formulate a long-term development strategy for it.

"The culture industry will experience a transition period from a State-owned sector to a market-oriented one, which is similar to the State-owned enterprise reform carried out in the 1980's," an official with the Ministry of Culture said.

He said that with the coming of economic globalization, culture has gone beyond pure art and become a combination of art and economics, which requires us to manage and operate the culture sector both in accordance with market principals and under the necessary supervisions.

Most of the culture units are expected to become self-operating enterprises within several years, and the government is striving to attract capital from multiple channels, especially from non-governmental enterprises and foreign companies.

Domestic culture products and services entering the international market and public culture program will gain political and financial support from the government.

Meanwhile, the government is expected to offer preferential fiscal and tax policies or set up specific funds to encourage the promotion of Chinese traditional culture, involving local operas and music, long-standing handicraft, protection of historic sites and cultural relics preservation.

"Establishment of a comprehensive, standard and completed law system in line with international practice will guarantee the sustainable, healthy and stable development of China's culture industry," said Guo Wei, an officer with Culture Department of Yunnan Province.

Drafting a series of regulations, aimed at revaluing, protecting and rationally exploiting China's culture resources, will top the agenda for drawing up a long-term development strategy.

"We should also actively take part in formulating the operation rules in the international market, which is to protect our interest and create a sound and fair environment for the development of the Chinese culture industry in the world arena," Guo said.

(China Daily August 27, 2000)