China-UK cultural cooperation fruitful

Vice-Premier Liu Yandong chaired the Shaping Cultural Landscapes meeting in Edinburgh on Tuesday, which is part of a mechanism aimed at intensifying cooperation between Chinese and British creative industries and exploring complementary strengths. The sector that the meeting was aimed at includes entities involved in art, fi lm, TV production, and creative art incubators.

China and the United Kingdom have benefitted from robust cooperation in the creative sector in recent years. Achievements include:

• In 2013, the Global Digital Media and Entertainment Alliance between the UK and China was launched with the aim of promoting long-term relationships in the digital creative industry and to open doors to the Chinese market for UK companies.

• In 2015, a 325-million-pound($437 million) joint program of creative and technology partnerships was announced during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the UK. The program covered film, TV, music, advanced engineering, and many other sectors.

• In 2012 and 2016, both countries signed a UK-China Television Coproduction Treaty, making the UK the second country in the world to have such an agreement with China. Six films were jointly produced last year.

• In addition, cities in both countries have seen more cooperation in the creative industry. Among them, the Edinburgh-Shenzhen Creative Exchange provides a platform of collaboration for entrepreneurs from China and the UK.

• During the last five years, a basic public culture service, covering both urban and rural areas, was built. It helped the added value of the cultural industry grow at an annual rate of 14.2 percent and contribute 6 percent to China's economic growth. In 2016, 4.1 percent of GDP was made up of added value from the cultural industry, worth some 3.08 trillion yuan($465 billion).

During the following five years, while total outbound investment is expected to reach $750 billion, China will import $8 trillion of goods and absorb $600 billion of foreign investment.

Zhang Yangfei in London contributed to the story.