The revenue of Beijing's cultural and creative industry from companies above designated size (enterprises with an annual revenue of over 20 million yuan) amounted to 1.36 trillion yuan (US$213 billion) in the first 11 months of 2017, with a year-on-year increase of 9.4 percent. This is according to statistics released on Jan. 27 at Beijing's local parliamentary session.
Beijing ranks first among all the provinces and cities in China in terms of the percentage of cultural and creative industry revenue in the regional gross domestic output. The industry is gradually becoming a new engine to boost the capital city's development.
Beijing has been designated as the cultural center of the country. Over the past five years, the city's cultural and creative industry has developed rapidly and become an important pillar industry. Data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics of China shows the added value of Beijing's cultural sector reached 210.58 billion yuan in 2016, accounting for 8.2 percent of the city's gross domestic output. Analysis suggests the percentage for 2017 was likely to continue to increase.
In this regard, Beijing saw a booming cultural and creative industry last year. The city produced 350 films in 2017, accounting for 36 percent of all the films the country had produced. "Wolf Warriors II" and "Never Say Die" were China's first and second highest-grossing domestic films last year, recording 5.68 billion yuan and 2.21 billion yuan respectively. Yearly output of Beijing's animation and game sectors reached 62.7 billion yuan, accounting for 30.8 percent of the country's total. The yearly revenue from companies above designated size in the design service sectors exceeded 200 billion yuan.
According to the latest report issued by the Cultural Industries Institute of Renmin University, Beijing's Cultural Industry Index ranks first among all the provinces and cities nationwide in 2017.
Chen Wei, head of the Industrial Development Division of the Beijing Municipality's Publicity Department, said Beijing is making efforts to establish a "high-grade, precision and advanced" cultural and creative industry system which boasts speed, quality, scale, and efficiency. For this purpose, Beijing has drafted and implemented the country's first provincial-level cultural industrial development guidance directory, dividing products into three categories: encouraged, restricted, and prohibited. This would help to build Beijing's cultural industry system with the character of the capital's function in the new era, and improve the industrial policy mechanism and business environment as well as optimize the spatial distribution, Chen said.