The National Bureau of Statistics released data showing that in 2023, enterprises above the national scale in culture and related industries realized operating revenues of 1,295.15 billion yuan, an increase of 8.2% over the previous year. The statistics show that the supporting role of the cultural services industry is steadily increasing, and the entertainment and leisure industry is recovering rapidly. At present, the national cultural tourism market is on the rise, the production of cultural business enterprises has realized restorative growth, and the cultural industry has been enlarged and strengthened in the midst of righteousness and innovation, which has become an important engine for promoting the high-quality development of China's economy.
Culture is a spiritual bond that unites people's hearts and minds, and a key factor in improving people's well-being. The development of public cultural services is an intrinsic requirement for safeguarding people's cultural rights and interests and improving people's quality of life, and an important way to improve the disadvantages of cultural development, which is related to the overall situation of the construction of a socialist cultural power. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has attached great importance to the development of cultural industries, improved the modern cultural industry system and market system, innovated the production and operation mechanism, completed the cultural and economic policies, and fostered the new cultural industry. The data show that in 2023, the cultural service industry realized an operating income of 6773.9 billion yuan, an increase of 14.1% over the previous year, with a growth rate significantly faster than the overall level of service industry enterprises above the national scale; the operating income of the cultural service industry accounted for 52.3% of all cultural enterprises above the national scale, which accounted for a proportion higher than the previous year's 2.7 percentage points; and the contribution rate of the growth of the operating income of all cultural enterprises above the national scale was 85.4%. These dazzling figures are the vivid embodiment of China's cultural industry entering a period of rapid development.
At present, China's cultural industry system is gradually improved, the cultural market is more prosperous and orderly, and the cultural supply is constantly enriched. In recent years, the introduction of policies and documents such as the Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a Modern Public Cultural Service System and the National Standard for Basic Public Services (2023 Edition) has promoted a steady increase in investment in public cultural construction, upgraded the quality of the cultural industry, and improved the effectiveness of public cultural services covering both urban and rural areas. During the recent Spring Festival holiday, China's cultural consumption market was exceptionally popular, with colorful cultural and tourism activities held around the country, attracting a large number of citizens and tourists to participate in the experience. According to relevant data, the 2024 Spring Festival holiday saw 474 million domestic tourism trips nationwide, up 34.3% year-on-year, with domestic tourists spending a total of 632.687 billion yuan on trips, up 47.3% year-on-year. In addition, there were about 6.83 million inbound and outbound trips, including about 3.6 million outbound trips and 3.23 million inbound trips. Cultural activities were rich and colorful, with about 150,000 mass cultural activities such as "Village Evening", opera in the countryside, and New Year's Eve in libraries held around the country, and about 669 million people participated in them online and offline; the number of commercial performances nationwide was 16,300, a year-on-year increase of 52.10%; the box-office revenue was 778 million yuan, up 80.09%; the number of people watching the performance was 6,576,500, up 77.71% year-on-year. What is most gratifying is that the way people celebrate the Spring Festival is also changing. Online temple fairs, Spring Festival movies, museums, ice and snow tourism, and group-buying and gift-giving have become new customs for people to celebrate the New Year.
It should also continue to improve the public cultural service system and continuously meet the diversified, multi-level and multi-faceted spiritual and cultural needs of the people. Public cultural services can only insist on seeking benefits from reform, further exploring the path of reform of the institutional mechanism for the construction of a modern public cultural service system, focusing on solving the outstanding contradictions and problems that constrain the high-quality development of public cultural services, and promoting the upgrading of public cultural services to high quality and diversification, so as to better satisfy the people's new expectations of a high-quality and better life. At present, the innovative application of information technologies such as big data, cloud computing and AR/VR has given a strong impetus to the reform of the cultural system and the innovation of the operating mechanism of public cultural services. They promote the formation of new consumption mode and grow the main body of consumption, while the new market demand has also given birth to new business forms such as meta-universe culture and tourism, museum culture and creation, etc. In particular, the network literature industry has realized the boutique content, diversified creation of realistic themes in recent years, and continuously fused the development of a variety of IP brands, which set off a boom in going abroad. In addition, the innovative application of digital technology will also prompt the factors of cultural production to continuously realize the optimization of the combination, so that the development of the cultural industry space can be broader.