This document discusses the relationship between globalization and the creative economy and culture. It examines whether globalization is necessary for the creative economy through analyzing cultural trade and comparative advantage. While globalization increases cultural exchange, it can also lead to an unequal economic order with some nations having cultural trade surpluses and deficits. The document also analyzes concepts like cultural imperialism, glocalization, media capitals, and the potential for US-China coproductions to strengthen China's soft power and film industry over the medium term. It questions whether political, economic and cultural power will remain interconnected in a globalized world or become more divergent.

1. Creative Economy and Culture: Does it Require
Globalization?
Terry Flew
Professor of Media and Communication
Creative Industries Faculty/Digital Media Research Centre
Brisbane, Australia
Presentation to Institute for Cultural Industries, Shenzhen University, 27 October 2016

2. Recent Books

3. 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/2016/07/2
9/2059436416662037.full.pdf+html

4. Globalization is all around us …

5. … but is globalization a new thing?

6. 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

7. 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

8. Australia and China

9. 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

10. North America, Europe and Asia
dominate world cultural trade

11. Does China have a cultural trade
deficit?

12. The Creative Economy perspective

13. 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)

15. Difficulties of defining ‘culture’

16. 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.)

17. Cultural Imperialism?

18. 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”

19. 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)

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

21. 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

22. Glocalization

23. 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).

24. 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).

25. 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?

26. China-US Co-productions

27. Growth in US-China co-productions
Talent
Soft skills
Global distribution
Soft power
Investment capital
World’s biggest
market
Scope for big
budget
productions

28. 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

29. Generic culture of blockbusters

30. Local entertainment and soft power

31. Digital soft power

35. The Perspectives
Analysis 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

36. 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?