Creative Economy and Culture: Does it Require Globalization?Terry FlewProfessor of Media and CommunicationCreative Industries Faculty/Digital Media Research CentreBrisbane, Australia

Presentation to Institute for Cultural Industries, Shenzhen University, 27 October 2016

Recent Books

Recent paper

• Terry Flew, “Entertainment media, cultural power, and post-globalization: The case of China’s international media expansion and the discourse of soft power”, Global Media and China, SAGE OnlineFirst, 1 August 2016 (open access)

• http://gch.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/07/29/2059436416662037.full.pdf+html

Globalization is all around us …

… but is globalization a new thing?

Cultural Trade

• Intercultural exchange: equality and diversity of world’s cultures intermixing and exchanging ideas and cultural products

• Cultural trade can enhance intercultural communication, and contribute to global peace and improved understanding across nations and societies

Comparative advantage• ‘If a country in the country the

opportunity cost of producing a product (other products to measure) lower than the production of the product in other countries the opportunity cost, then the country in the production of this kind of product will have a comparative advantage. We can also say that when one producer at a lower opportunity cost than another producer to produce goods, we call this producer on such products and services has a comparative advantage.’ (Baidu Encyclopedia)

• Theory first developed by British classical economist David Ricardo

Australia and China

But there is a paradox of cultural trade

• If all cultures are equal, then how can some nations have a cultural trade surplus and others have a cultural trade deficit?

• Is this a sign of an unequal economic order?• Tension behind globalization – both greater global

interconnectedness and uneven development on a world scale

North America, Europe and Asia dominate world cultural trade

Does China have a cultural trade deficit?

The Creative Economy perspective

The ‘soft power’ perspective• ‘The overall strength of China’s

culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China’s international status’ (Hu Jintao, 2007)

• ‘To strengthen our cultural soft power, we should disseminate the values of modern China … More work should be done to refine and explain our ideas, and extend the platform for overseas publicity, so as to make our culture known through international communication and dissemination’ (Xi Jinping, 2015)

Difficulties of defining ‘culture’

China ‘s Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI)

• In surplus if one includes manufactured goods in the CCI definition (UNCTAD Creative Economy Report 2010)

• In deficit if we focus on the arts, media and design more specifically (e.g. substantial deficit in cultural services – advertising, design, architecture etc.)

Cultural Imperialism?

Critical Political Economy

• World’s largest media (and Internet) companies are U.S. based

• Global companies with a global corporate culture• New International Division of Cultural Labor (Toby

Miller) – knowledge work in the West/low-cost assembly in rest of the world

• “Runaway” cultural productions – “Global Hollywood”

Is the cultural imperialism thesis in decline?

• National media content continues to prevail in most countries

• Global media corporations often have to negotiate with nation-states

• Media industries often less “global” than other industries

• Growth of “second tier” production centers• Growing global competition for cultural influence (e.g.

EU as counter to US, BRICS countries)

BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa)

Glocalization

• The global and the local interact with one another• ‘In order to produce goods for a market of diverse

consumers, it is necessary for any producer, large or small, to adapt his/her product in some way to particular features of the envisaged set of consumers’ (Robertson & White, 2007, p. 63)

• Global brands need to be adapted to local conditions in order to succeed

• TV formats: global templates adapted for local markets

Glocalization

New competition to “Global Hollywood”

• ‘Although Hollywood’s supremacy is unlikely to be broken at any time in the foreseeable future, at least some of these other centres will conceivably carve out stable niches for themselves in world markets, and all the more so as they develop more effective marketing and distribution capacities … This argument, if correct, points toward a much more polycentric and polyphonic global audiovisual production system than has been the case in the recent past’ (Scott, 2004, p. 475).

Cities as central to globalization• ‘Cities … have become the “mixing bowls” in which all the

combined and uneven processes of globalisation play out, particularly in the cultural field. Cities are becoming the protagonists in cultural policy and politics whose importance equals and sometimes exceeds that of national governments’ (Isar et. al., 2012, p. 3).

• ‘Cities … [that] function less as centres of national media than as central nodes in the transnational flow of culture, talent and resources. Rather than asking about relations among and between nations, we should explore the ways in which media industries based in particular cities are participating in the restructuring of spatial and cultural relations worldwide’ (Curtin, 2009, p 111).

Media Capitals• Concept first developed by US media theorist Michael

Curtin• Proposes the emergence of alternative global media

production centres• ‘Second-tier’ media capitals often cater to specialist geo-

linguistic markets (Mumbai, Cairo, Hong Kong, Miami, Seoul)

• Trajectories of creative migration is an important concept: where do creative talents want to locate themselves?

China-US Co-productions

Growth in US-China co-productions

TalentSoft skillsGlobal distributionSoft power

Investment capitalWorld’s biggest marketScope for big budget productions

The challenges

• Very different political cultures• Will audiences respond positively?• Do these films “look Chinese”? Does that matter?• Possible backlash in United States• Anything other than blockbusters?• What may interest the West about China may not

meet the approval of the Chinese authorities

Generic culture of blockbusters

Local entertainment and soft power

Digital soft power

The PerspectivesAnalysis Outcomes

Cultural imperialism Latest tactic of “Global Hollywood” to capture Chinese market and spread US soft power

Cultural products will only have token local elements

Glocalization US and China can only enter each other’s markets in partnership

Challenge of developing “hybrid” products

Media capitals US capital and skills can kick start Chinese film industry

Will strengthen Chinese position in the medium term

Post-globalization?• Political, economic and cultural power – interconnected

(critical political economy) or divergent (globalization theories)

• How does cultural power intersect – or not – with political and economic power?

• What implications do new media have – “new public diplomacy” debates?

• Continuing power of nation-states in global context – post-globalization?

• Is there an international retreat from “globalism” (Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Brexit, Duterte, etc.)?

• If so, what implications may this have for the global creative economy?