During this period there has also been greater demand for China’s services and culture, which, when combined with the guidance of favorable policies, has enabled China’s cultural trade to grow in step with the economy.
Today, Shanghai’s service trade industry is becoming increasingly mature, with an optimized industry structure. Its contributions to the city’s economy have grown, making it an increasingly important sector. The world’s economy made a strong recovery in 2017, showing stronger cyclical factors and an endogenous momentum of growth, as well as an improved financial environment and growing market demand. This universally enabled emerging markets and developing countries to accelerate their economic growth. In the face of these favorable international conditions, the total value of Shanghai’s imports and exports of cultural products and services hit about USD 9.11 billion that year, up 3.59% over 2016, returning to its previous high level. Of this USD 9,11 billion, 4.97 billion was from cultural products, up 3.28% compared with 2016, and about 4.14 billion came from cultural services, up 3.97% over the previous year. The cultural and entertainment services sector continued to perform strongly, growing by nearly 15%.
Residents’ cultural spending is also expected to maintain an average annual growth rate of over 16% throughout the period of the “13th Five-Year Plan.” Thanks to the growth in consumption of cultural and entertainment services, Shanghai has stepped up the development of its cultural industry; as a result, its production of cultural products has demonstrated notable effects of scale. Backed by a huge cultural market, more large investments are flowing into Shanghai. Thanks to its fast economic growth, Shanghai has accumulated valuable experience in driving growth and a vast pool of circulating funds, which together have helped build a solid foundation to ensure that cultural trade continues to boom in the future.