Ministry of Culture and Tourism: Focus on integrating culture and tourism as the main theme, cultivating the tourism industry into a livelihood industry, a happiness industry, and a strategic pillar industry

On March 7th, the Fourth Session of the 14th National People’s Congress held a press conference focused on people’s livelihood at the Media Center News Hall.

During the event, Sun Yeli, Minister of Culture and Tourism, stated that this year’s Spring Festival holiday saw a booming cultural and tourism market. During the 9-day holiday, domestic tourism visits reached 596 million, close to 600 million, with tourism spending exceeding 800 billion yuan, setting a new record. The lively scene during the Spring Festival holiday is just a microcosm; in fact, over the past year, the culture and tourism industry has shown a vigorous development trend. Data shows that in the cultural sector, large-scale cultural and related industry enterprises achieved a total revenue of 15 trillion yuan last year, a 7.4% increase year-on-year; total profits reached 1.4 trillion yuan, up 6.5%. Among them, new business formats developed rapidly, with 16 sub-industries characterized by new formats generating nearly 7 trillion yuan in revenue, an increase of over 14%. In tourism, the number of domestic trips exceeded 6.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of over 16%, with tourism expenditure reaching 6.3 trillion yuan, up 9.5%, also hitting a new high.

The CPC Central Committee’s recommendations for the “14th Five-Year Plan” and this year’s government work report both make important arrangements and clear requirements for building a culturally strong country and a tourism powerhouse. The next step for the culture and tourism departments is to focus on the goal of building a strong cultural and tourism nation, develop and implement the “14th Five-Year Plan” for cultural and tourism development, proactively align with national development strategies, and integrate culture and tourism into the overall plans of the Party and the country. This will better play the roles of nurturing the mind, cultivating character, and empowering economic and social development.

In terms of culture, the focus is on implementing more proactive cultural economic policies, prospering and developing cultural undertakings, improving the cultural industry and market systems, and launching more high-quality cultural products and services that satisfy the public. As living standards and aesthetic appreciation improve, people’s demands for the quality of cultural products are increasing. Emphasis should be placed on producing quality works, implementing a series of new-era artistic creation projects, guiding artists to enhance their awareness of excellence and improve original capabilities, and launching more outstanding literary and artistic works loved by the people to read, watch, and listen to. At the same time, public cultural service levels and accessibility should be improved, various cultural and museum venues and new cultural spaces should be well built and utilized, and more high-quality cultural resources should reach grassroots levels, allowing urban and rural residents to enjoy cultural services anytime and anywhere more conveniently. Additionally, we should respond to the growing cultural creativity of the people, prosper new mass arts under the internet conditions. Now, the public no longer satisfies with just reading, watching, or listening; they are more willing to participate actively. Especially with the development of artificial intelligence, the barriers to participation have been greatly lowered. We should develop new mass arts, providing stage for every passion and platform for every talent.

Regarding tourism, the main focus is to take cultural-tourism integration as the main line, and strive to truly cultivate tourism into a livelihood industry, a happiness industry, and a strategic pillar industry. There are two key points. One is intelligentization—seizing the good opportunities brought by smart technology to drive new formats and scenarios, promoting the iterative upgrading of traditional tourism. The other is integration—as integration is the main trend, no industry can develop alone. Currently, deep integration of culture and tourism has become a new driving force for tourism development, with the trend of “culture-tourism + various industries” becoming increasingly evident. Tourism is no longer just about visiting famous sites and scenery; people prefer to immerse themselves in life and experience culture—pay for performances, queue for trendy attractions, and travel to check in a city. New products that emphasize experience and empathy are always more popular in the market. The “experience economy” is spreading worldwide. The core of the experience economy is cultural experience, which requires cultural roots and cultural empowerment. We will follow this trend, continue to promote deep integration of culture and tourism, cultivate brands related to performances, film and television, events, intangible cultural heritage, and more, and develop new formats combining culture, tourism, commerce, sports, agriculture, industry, and more. This will create new growth points, generate new value, and form new advantages to better meet the needs of the people.