"Fireworks", "Digital and Intelligent Life", "Village BA" and "Special Forces Tourism", in the "Top Ten Internet Terms of 2023" recently released by the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, words directly related to cultural tourism account for 40%. The "hot" cultural tourism consumer market has also made finance, as a "living water", play an increasingly important role.
While the cultural tourism industry is recovering rapidly, what are the opportunities and challenges faced by cultural finance? On December 21, at the 2023 China Cultural Finance Summit, jointly organized by PBC School of Finance of Tsinghua University and Beijing Dongcheng District Party Committee and District Government, experts and scholars from regulatory service institutions, industry and academia gathered to discuss the new development and trend of cultural finance.
The market is recovering
"Meet to see the exhibition tour", "food strategy tour", "e-sports entertainment tour", "national style Hanfu travel photography", "travel with the performance" and "travel with the event" and other integrated development formats have become the new fashion of culture and tourism. New spaces for music festivals, concerts, and performing arts have become new "city business cards" and "traffic passwords". At the meeting, Miao Muyang, Director of the Industrial Development Department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, concluded: "Culture casts the soul, technology empowers, hosts and guests share, and near and far have become the significant characteristics of the recovery of the cultural and tourism market. ”
In 2023, the cultural industry and tourism will develop well. In the first three quarters, the operating income of enterprises above designated size in cultural and related industries reached 9,161.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.7 percent, and the number of domestic tourists reached 3.67 billion, and the tourism income reached 3.7 trillion yuan, an increase of 75 percent and 114 percent year-on-year respectively.
Talking about the development status of the cultural tourism industry, Gu Liangfei, Secretary of the Party Committee of PBC School of Finance of Tsinghua University, also said that the consumer demand of the cultural tourism industry has fully recovered, the supply-side innovation has been accelerating, new scenarios represented by "immersive" projects have been emerging, and the digital upgrading led by artificial intelligence technology has continued to advance. The cross-border integration of the cultural tourism industry and other industries has been deepened, and the characteristics of high-quality development of the industry have become more obvious.
"Chinese culture looks at Beijing", and the recovery of the cultural and tourism industry is also supported by relevant financial data. Yao Li, member of the party committee and vice president of the Beijing branch of the People's Bank of China, revealed at the meeting that as of the end of November, the balance of loans for Beijing's cultural industry was 178.75 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16.6%, and the scale and growth rate reached the highest level in recent years; the number of borrowers increased by 22% year-on-year, continuing to maintain a relatively high growth rate of credit coverage.
Maximum difficulty
Although various departments continue to promote financial support for the development of the cultural and tourism industry, in view of the characteristics of "light, thin, short, small and weak", the problem of "difficult and expensive financing" in the cultural and tourism industry has always existed.
"From the perspective of financial support for the real economy, the biggest difficulty faced by the current cultural and tourism industry is still the problem of 'difficult and expensive financing' for small and medium-sized cultural and tourism enterprises. Miao Muyang said bluntly.
The Cultural and Creative Finance Research Center of PBC School of Finance of Tsinghua University also mentioned in the "China Culture and Tourism Industry Investment and Financing Report (2023)" released on the same day that the vitality of market investment needs to be activated, and the financing function needs to be further stimulated. In the first three quarters, the number and amount of financing projects in the cultural and tourism industry decreased by 19.3% and 34.8% year-on-year respectively. In addition, the investment activities of cultural and tourism enterprises are still in the recovery stage. In the first half of the year, the capital expenditure of A-share listed cultural enterprises and key tourism enterprises declined to varying degrees. However, since the third quarter, the fixed asset investment in culture, sports and entertainment has turned positive, and the recovery trend is more obvious.
In order to support the recovery of the cultural and tourism industry, in September this year, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Several Measures on Unleashing the Potential of Tourism Consumption and Promoting the High-quality Development of the Tourism Industry", proposing "30 Articles".
"This is the most comprehensive policy arrangement and the most friendly policy package for the tourism industry in recent years. We have been making continuous efforts to make full use of financial policies and establish and improve the investment and financing system of the cultural and tourism industry. Miao Muyang said. "Since 2019, we will work with the People's Bank of China and the Ministry of Finance to create a national cultural and financial cooperation demonstration zone, concentrate high-quality resources for pilot trials, and encourage the exploration of effective, sustainable and replicable cultural financial innovation models that are in line with regional characteristics." ”
More "Practical Moves"
However, the industry is more concerned about what "practical measures" will be used in the future cooperation between culture and finance, and whether it can effectively solve the long-standing financing problems of the cultural and tourism industry.
"Cultural tourism investment is not a 'short-term' investment, but a long-term investment, which requires long-term financial support. Miao Muyang said that to solve this problem, we also need the joint efforts of cultural and tourism departments at all levels, market entities and financial institutions.
Yao Li said that in terms of improving supporting facilities, the Beijing Branch of the People's Bank of China, together with the industrial department, has created special re-lending and re-discounting products ("Jingwenrong" and "Jingwentong") to support cultural enterprises, and fully included the list of enterprises provided by the industrial department into the scope of policy support. We will build and improve the bank-enterprise docking system in Beijing, promote banks to actively meet the financing needs of enterprises, and promote financing of more than 10 billion yuan for cultural, tourism and sports enterprises. At the same time, we will guide banks to help enterprises actively apply for the "investment and loan award" policy, the first loan discount policy, and the start-up guarantee loan policy that Beijing has introduced, so as to better promote the integrated development of culture and finance.
"In the next step, we will work with relevant departments and financial institutions to further improve the policy and service system of cultural finance in Beijing, continuously polish the golden signboard of the national cultural and financial cooperation demonstration zone, and integrate the capital's cultural finance with science and technology finance, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance and digital finance. Yao Li said.
"The cooperation between the cultural tourism industry and the financial industry has also entered a new stage. In Gu Liangfei's view, since the beginning of this year, cultural and financial cooperation has been deepening around the upgrading of the industry and the coordinated development of the region. By giving full play to the function of resource allocation, the cultural financial market gathers financial resources to new technologies, new tracks, and new scenarios, helping the structural optimization and high-quality development of the cultural and tourism industry. At the same time, there is still room for further deepening of cultural and financial cooperation, for example, in the revitalization of cultural and tourism stock assets, which needs to be further strengthened. In addition, the investment and financing market activity of the cultural and tourism industry also needs to be further improved, and the cooperation between regional culture and finance still needs to be further promoted.
The recovery of investment and financing needs to give more "care" to enterprises to regain their confidence. For the next step, Miao Muyang said that he should strengthen the investment confidence in the cultural and tourism industry. The Central Economic Work Conference pointed out that next year, it is necessary to persist in seeking progress while maintaining stability, promoting stability through progress, establishing first and then breaking down; stimulating consumption with potential, expanding investment with benefits; and actively cultivating new consumption growth points such as culture, entertainment, and tourism. These policies and measures are good for cultural and tourism enterprises, the cultural tourism market, and the cultural tourism industry.
In terms of preventing financial risks in the field of culture and tourism, Miao Muyang also said, "When deepening cultural and financial cooperation, in the process of promoting the construction of cultural and tourism projects, we must further enhance the awareness of preventing financial risks, strictly prevent the alienation of general commercial behaviors in this field into illegal financial activities and financial risks, and make overall arrangements to promote high-level security with high-quality development and ensure high-quality development with high-level security."
Beijing Business Daily reporter Yue Pinyu