Policy and Governance

This chapter builds on the core themes of the cultural, the creative, and the social by demonstrating how policies embodying distinctive Chinese interpretations of western concepts of cultural industries and creative industries have been deployed. Cleaving to a traditional view of cultural industries, China has developed a more assertive cultural nationalism, while at the same time embracing the industrial modernization offered by creative industries policies including intellectual property rectification and growing global brands. But it is China’s pivotal embrace of the full potential of digital platformization of economy and society that marks Chinese policy and governance as world leading—both for its integration of social amelioration objectives as well as a concerning level of social surveillance.