Creative Industrial Parks in Post-Industrial Transformation of China Economy

Abstract

Achievements of Chinese manufacturing industries are well known and thoroughly studied. Less analyzed are the achievements of China in advanced sectors of the post-industrial economy, namely in creative and cultural industries. Whereas the development of creative and cultural industries within the context of the modern knowledge-based and creative economy is well researched, the role and place of creative industrial parks is to great extent neglected, despite the fact that they are actively used in developed countries as tools to stimulate creative sectors of economies. The article investigates the role of creative industrial parks in the successful development of creative and cultural industries in China. The authors show that the development of the infrastructure for creative and cultural industries in China is accompanied by the establishment of many creative clusters. In many cases, in the center of a creative cluster there are one or several industrial creative parks, which attempt to combine the focus on high technologies and creative sectors. The authors found that governmental agencies in China stimulate decentralized, open to foreign influences and private initiatives approach to creative and cultural industries regulation. The most interesting trend, identified in the article, is that regional and municipal authorities stimulate technological advancements of creative parks, which leads to the transformation of creative parks to creative technological parks. These creative technoparks encourage integration of creative and cultural industries with telecommunications and information technologies and enhance the spillover effect of the innovative potential of creative technological parks in traditional sectors of the economy