Created in China: The Great New Leap Forward

This book examines China s creative economy and how television, animation, advertising, design, publishing and digital games are reshaping traditional understanding of culture. Since the 1950s China has endeavoured to catch-up with advanced Western economies. Made in China is one approach to global competitiveness. But a focus on manufacturing and productivity is impeding innovation. China imports creativity and worries about its cultural exports deficit . In the cultural sector Chinese audiences are attracted to Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese culture, as well as Hollywood cinema. This book provides a fresh look looks at China s move up the global value chain. It argues that while government and (most) citizens would prefer to associate with the nationalistic, but unrealized created in China brand, widespread structural reforms are necessary to release creative potential. Innovation policy in China has recently acknowledged these problems. It considers how new ways of managing cultural assets can renovate largely non-competitive Chinese cultural industries. Together with a history of cultural commerce in China, the book details developments in new creative industries and provides the international context for creative cluster policy in Beijing and Shanghai.

Michael Keane is Research Fellow with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. His most recent book (co-authored with Anthony Fung and Albert Moran) is New Television, Globalization and the East Asian Cultural Imagination (2006). He is co-editor of Television across Asia: Television Industries, Programme Formats and Globalisation (Routledge); and Media in China: Consumption, Content and Crisis (Routledge).