Cultural service industry full of opportunities in worldwide turmoil
On September 28, 2008, the Shanghai International Cultural Service Trade Platform was officially launched in the city’s bonded area. It was China’s first platform for international trade in cultural goods and services.
The 130-m-high Oriental International Cultural Trade Center, which is an important facility of the platform, is close to Customs Terminal 2 of Shanghai Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone and has about 59,000 sq m of gross floor area.
The Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone, which is the first and largest among the 14 free trade zones on the mainland, has attracted 150 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list to open offices in the zone. Its economic volume alone equals the combined total of the other 13 zones.
Co-funded by the Shanghai municipal government and Shanghai’s Pudong district government, the platform is a 38-story building including a conference center, an exhibition center, a business service center and an audio-visual center.
Subway line 6 lies right in front of the platform and it takes only 30 minutes to drive to the People’s Square, the center of Shanghai, It is also 40 minutes by car to either of the city’s two airports and is about 25 minutes by subway to the Shanghai 2010 Expo park in Pudong. The facility offers convenient access to a developed traffic network.
The platform will increase in size by the end of 2009 when construction is completed on a 115-m-tall facility with a total floor space of 36,000 sq m. Because of China’s encouraging the cultural services, including movies, TV programming, animation and property rights, to go global, the platform in Shanghai can serve not only as a one-stop site for imports and experts, a gathering place for foreign and domestic cultural service enterprises, but also a testing ground for implementation of cultural trade policies and an exhibition venue for cultural products, as well as a training center for industry professionals.
Ren Yibiao, chairman and general manager with Shanghai Oriental Huiwen International Cultural Service Trading Co Ltd, the operating company of the platform, expressed his opinion about the platform as follows:
In the process of communicating with foreigners, we Chinese realize the urgency of redefining and promoting our cultural products so as to make people in other nations understand us easier. Especially after the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games gives wide exposure to Chinese culture, the cultural service platform will provide more opportunities for the world to understand China better through movies, music, dramas, shows and forms. What’s more, the cultural service trade center offers culture-related companies a leasing price much lower; even though Shanghai’s high-end office rental is already $2 or $3 a day per sq m.
Companies in the platform can enjoy a package of favorable treatment offered by the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone. For example, Waigaoqiao, a bonded area “inside the border yet outside customs”, means goods made in China will not be treated as domestic products, while products made overseas will not be levied tariffs as they are considered still outside the country.
As to import equipment for their own use, the registered companies in the free trade zone will not be charged tariffs. The tariff exemption will reduce the purchase price as much as 30 percent, significantly lowering startup and hardware costs.
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