Expand Cultural Brands

As a result of 30 years arduous efforts, China has cultivated a series of influential cultural brands. It has introduced such activities to the overseas areas as Celebrating the Chinese Spring Festival, Celebrating the National Day, China in the Classroom, and Show China, which have become important carriers to promote the Chinese culture. Among them, Celebrating Spring Festival in Overseas Areas has covered 18 countries in Asia, Eurasia, Afro-Asia, West Europe, Africa, America and the Pacific Region.

In 2007, the culture delegation of the Chinese Government, along with art ensembles from seven Chinese provinces and autonomous regions, the Thailand royal family, Thailand prime minister and cabinet ministers, and nearly 500,000 Thailand people, were present at the Chinese Spring Festival Cultural Activity in Bangkok. In Australia, a 650-member delegation from central China’s Henan Province joined the Chinese Lunar New Year Festooned Vehicle Parade in Sydney, attracting about 200,000 audiences. Leading foreign government officials are highly concerned and actively participate in these activities, exerting far-reaching influences. They have become an important platform for China to promote the Chinese culture in the 21st century. Each year, China has also adopted various measures to produce and supply overseas people with a mass of movies, television series, documentaries, photos, albums, and souvenirs, which are recognized by overseas people.

Have Greater Say in International Cultural Affairs

China has actively applied all sorts of platforms to have greater say in international cultural affairs. Since it adopted the reform and opening up policy in the late 1970s, China has launched bilateral, multilateral, regional and international cultural cooperation. It has participated in and sponsored large-scale international cultural exchange meetings, promoted its foreign policy of peace, development and cooperation, and advocated cultural diversity. It has also actively contributed to such internationally concerned activities as protecting cultural heritages, fighting piracy and cultural relic smuggling, and recovering cultural relics lost to overseas areas, and made itself have greater say in international and multilateral cultural affairs.

In 1997, China joined the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. On this basis, it has recovered quite an array of cultural relics from Britain, the United States, Japan and Denmark.

Since 2002, the cultural delegation of the Chinese Government has participated in the fifth and sixth ministerial conferences of the International Network on Cultural Policy. It sponsored the seventh ministerial annual conference of the International Network on Cultural Policy in Shanghai, which delivered the Shanghai Statement. In 2003, the Ministry of Culture sponsored the ASEM – Culture and Civilization Meeting under the theme of “unity of cultural diversity”.

In 2006, China was elected a member state of the Intergovernmental Council Committee of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage with few opposing votes. It joined the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage and Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It entered the leadership of three major international organizations for international cultural heritage, which are International Council of Museum, International Council on Monuments and Sites and International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. These movements enabled China to have a say in the course of establishing rules for protecting cultural heritages and intangible cultural heritages in the world.