‘The China Cultural and Creative Industries Reports 2013’ is an overview of China’s cultural and creative industries (CCIs) written by Chinese academics but now available in English to a global audience. It is designed to address the gaps in the existing literature, including policy changes, emerging trends and investment opportunities of the CCIs in China to help individuals, businesses and organisations wanting to compete in this area. The reports provide access to research and critical perspectives on CCIs on an industry-by-industry basis. Areas researched in this first collection include film, news and publishing, broadcasting and TV, animation and games, new media, advertising, fine art and performing arts.

The reports have been edited by Patricia Walker, associate professor of enterprise and honorary researcher at the Institute for Cultural Industries, Peking University, and Hardy Yong Xiang, associate professor of the School of Arts and vice-Dean of the Institute for Cultural Industries, Peking University.

The growth of China’s CCIs has implications for trade, academics and policymakers who want to learn how the CCIs work in China and how business models can be substantially different from those in the West.

Paul Owen, managing director at BOP Consulting, UK-based culture and creativity consultancy, said: “Markets are burgeoning. The latest example is that China has just overtaken Japan to become the second largest film market and is predicted to overtake Hollywood by the end of the decade: box office receipts jumped 30% in 2012 to $2.7 billion. The country has 277 million mobile web users, almost half of whom use their devices to download content. E-commerce is set to treble by 2015 to a predicted $420 billion.”