Moving Forward on All Fronts
by Cathy Barbash
China “cultural hands” have been waiting for news of priorities in China’s next Five-Year Plan, wondering whether the sector reforms and heightened investment in cultural export would continue. The news is now in, and those of us who depend on substantial engagement, support and greater flexibility from Chinese government-related and independent cultural entities can breathe easier. On Monday, the Xinhua News Agency reported that a senior Communist Party of China (CPC) in charge of culture and publicity had publicly pledged to deepen the nation’s reform of its cultural sector over the next five years. Said Liu Yunshan, a Secretariat member of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, “More state-owned cultural institutions will be converted into enterprises as the nation builds a competition-based market for cultural products and services.” Liu spoke at what was in essence a barnstorming tour for these new reforms out in Henan Province, billed as “a workshop on a blueprint for the country’s cultural reforms and development for the “12th Five-Year Plan” (2011-2015). While assuring the crowd that the reforms would be done “in accordance with the requirements of the Scientific Outlook on Development.” (read, kosher), he stressed that “Cultural restructuring is fundamental for the emancipation of cultural productivity and the realization of cultural prosperity and development,”
Local party officials responsible for local publicity work in the provinces of Henan, Hebei, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Shandong, Guangdong, Yunnan, Shaanxi and Fujian, as well as the autonomous regions of Guangxi and Inner Mongolia, provided reinforcement and reassurance.
Moving to enable reforms on all fronts, simultaneously on Monday, a delegation of Chinese cultural officials from a variety of provinces began a week-long “how-to” seminar on Broadway theater in New York City. I’ll hope to catch up with some of them tonight at the Wen Jiabao dinner to ask what of their curriculum will be most useful to them.
P.S. Congrats to Alan Gilbert on the occasion of the New York Philharmonic’s opening night. Now that he is well-ensconced, I wonder when he will take the Orchestra back to China.