Top 30 National Cultural Enterprises is a quite distinguished award in China. All the companies on the list are of great influence in cultural industry in China. On the occasion of the 14th China (Shenzhen) International Cultural Industries Fair, Guangming Daily and the Economic Daily co-issued this year’s list, andthe Minister of the Publicity Ministry of the CPC Central Committee presented awards to the short-listed companies. Directors from provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities communicated with leaders of the award-winning companies to seek more development of the national cultural industry.
On May 10th, the "Top 30 National Cultural Enterprises" list was officially released, which marked the 10th appearance of the list. All the companies on each year’s list truly are the “big boss” worth the title. This year, the list witnessesthecombinedbusiness income of 376.8 billion RMB, the net assets of 456.9 billion RMB and the net profits of 42.1 billion RMB. All indicators hit a record high, while the net assets exceeded 450 billion RMB and net profit exceeded 40 billion RMB for the first time.
Similar to the “Top 30” list in 2017, distributing companies have occupied more than one seat on the list and amounted to 13, this makes almost “half of the list”. Among them, China South Publishing & Media Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “CNS”) was re-elected for the 10th time, which reflects that its true nature of “evergreen”.
On this year’s list there is another Hunan enterprise, Mango Media Co., Ltd. While TANGELPublishing Co., Ltd. , headquartered in Changsha, was on the list of nominated companies. Though Hunan is a less developed province in centra China, yet it boasts a very tenacious and vigorous cultural industry which can be seen from the fact that three enterprises got selected at the same time.
In fact, Hunan's cultural industry, which is mainly supported by publications, radio and television, animation and video games, has always been entitled with the name of "cultural army of Hunan". According to the preliminary calculation of the Hunan Provincial Bureau of Statistics, in 2017, the added value of Hunan's cultural and creative industries exceeded the 200 billion RMB for the first time, accounting for 6.35% of the GDP; at the same time, the influence of Hunan's cultural industry continued to increase. In the "China's Cultural Industry Development Index for Provinces and Cities (2017)" issued by Renmin University of China, it ranked seventh in the comprehensive index, ranking first among the central and western regions.
Sticking to the main business, the core spirit of"cultural army of Hunan"
Excellent companies all have their own unchanging philosophies, such as Apple's minimalism, Huawei's innovation, Toyota's keeping improving... For CNS, the philosophy is pure culture. Gong Shuguang, Chairman of CNS once said thatour perseverance on publishing is what makes us rank the 7th in the global publishing industry, and get listed in the “Top 30 National Cultural Enterprises” for 10 consecutive years, as well as maintaining the market value and highest profits among listed companies in the publishing and media industry in China.
In 2017, one hundred volumes of the "From East to West" published by Yuelu Publishing House of CNS were published completely. Publishing this set of bookswith more than 17 million words takes them 36 years, and several generations of editors’ efforts, which becomes a much-told story in the publishing industry. In the eyes of Gong Shuguang, this is what we call responsibility and determination of a publishing company. “As a large-scale cultural company with publishing as its core business, organizing, publishing, and broadcasting outstanding Chinese culture are our responsibility and mission. Despite the capital and technological competitions, we want to bea winner with better contents."
Publishing comes first and publishing good books are the goals. Its market share of the book industry always ranks the top three in the country, and in the sections of popular science, composition, classical literature and othersalwaysrank the first.Besides, CNS have won many national awards with some key titles such as “Huxiang Culture”, “Literature of Yan’an”, “From East to West” etc.. And CNS also have published many best sellers including “Positive Energy”, “A Brief History of Time”, "Premier of Qing Dynasty".
CNS has a strong publishing business and a firmly large scale of economy. No matter howits development strategy and positioning upgrading in the changing market, CNS has always focusing on the expansion of its publishing business as a strategy. The development concept it always firmly believe is to put social benefits first and balance the social and economic benefits. This development concept has also become the core spirit of the "cultural army of Hunan".
Reform, innovation andintegrated development supportits main business
In 2017, with CNS as the leading company, the total assets of Hunan press and publishing industry reached 62.18 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 6.33%, business income of 45.14 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 5.07%, total profit of 4.421 billion RMB, and a year-on-year increase of 2.92%. There were 11,942 books published with 4,579,900 copies; 85 newspapers with 94,436 copies; 254 periodicals with 13,759 copies.
Such dazzling data is a result from continuous reform and innovation of the
Hunan Provincial Party Committee, the provincial government, and various enterprises. Since 2015, Hunan has continued to promote reforms and innovations in its cultural institutional mechanisms. It has taken the lead in setting up the Hunan Provincial State-owned Cultural Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and its offices in the country, realizing the “Four Unifications”. To rationalize the relationship of property rights, integrate and reorganize 8 provincial state-owned cultural enterprises to further increase their scale, concentration and professionalization. A number of documents, including the “Administrative Measures for the Supervision and Administration of State-owned Cultural Enterprises in Hunan Province (Trial)”, were issued to support the cultural reform and development. At present, Hunan is actively planning a layout and further deepening the reform of the cultural system.
Reform and innovation brings multiple vitality. CNS, which has developed into the leading enterprise in China's publishing and media industry with the most complete industrial chain, the most abundant media formsand the most diverse media,is a fresh example for "reform, innovation and integrated development". In recent years, CNS has adhered to the development strategy of “combining online and offline, culture and finance” while focusing on publishing businesses, and has achieved remarkable results in fields of cultural finance, digital education,communication matrix construction, and IP development and operation,etc.
In 2017, the opening ceremony of the National Key Laboratory for the Integration and Development (CNS) authorized by the State Press, Publication, Administration of Radio, Film, Film and Television Bureau was formally established. It focuses on the researches of the integrated development of culture and finance, the Internet cultural financial services based on cloud computing and big data technology, and operations of book IP. So far, CNS has initially formed a four-in-one scientific research framework which consists "National Key Laboratory + Postdoctoral Workstation + Industrial Research Institute + Industry Media". All of these are "think tank" supporting for company strategic research, scientific decision-making and technological breakthroughs.The data show that at present, the economic benefits from the integrated development of traditional media and emerging media in Hunan are beginning to appear. The innovation of industry and cultural enterprises has emerged, and the economic benefits and brand influence continue to increase. Mango TV achieved operating revenue of 3.5 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 84%, and profits of 400 million RMB; mobile users reached 500 million; IPTV operator business covered more than 55 million users; Internet television terminals had 65 million active users, advancing the fourth in the domestic online video industry, ranking No. 1 in state-controlled video websites. Tianwen Digital Education reached a strategic cooperation with Alibaba Cloud and Baidu Cloud. The product application has covered more than 3,000 schools nationwide. TVZ One has built a "program purchase" copyright trading platform and realized 585 cooperative desks, a year-on-year increase of 10.38%. Shanxi Culture cooperated with domestic well-known IP owners to tailor-made derivatives and achieved sales of 300 million RMB. Qindao Performance Companyvigorously developed its live webcasting business, achieved an operating income of nearly 400 million RMB, forming an offline support line and an online feed-back line, leading the transition to upgrading with new developments.
Transformation and upgrading, capital is an important tool
Looking at the Hunan companies listed in the “Top 30Cultural Enterprises ", they all are listed companies with strong capital flow, which reflects the current trend of Chinese publishing companies in seeking financial integration to drive the growth of the industry. HaoZhensheng, president of China Redactological Society, believes that capital has become an important force in the transformation and upgrading of modern publishing companies.
"Publishing companies of a certain scale face two directions for further development. One is to make big projects and the other is to do mergers and acquisitions." HaoZhensheng points out that for enterprises, both directions are of strategic significance, and the using of financial elements will provide huge capital support to the development of the publishing group. Whether it is an investment to relatively good growth projects or a large merger and acquisition case, it will enhance the overall strength of the company.
For CNS, since its listing in 2010, it has successively established affiliated financial company and the first fund management company, which shows its more steady steps toward “integration of industry and finance”. According its plan, under the "Cultural + Financial" strategic platform, CNS will further accelerate the pace of resource integration and strategic mergers and acquisitions, and further expand the medical and health industry sector while consolidating the advantages of the cultural industry. In comparison, Fortune Capital, which is owned by DGC, has set a benchmark for the integration of culture and finance in the area of venture capital. Fortune Capital, focusing on the TMT, consumer services, medical and health, energy conservation and environmental protection fields as well as military industry, smart manufacturing, robots and other specialty segments, has developed into the largest domestic investment company with the strongest investment capacity and the biggest influence.
According to statistics, there are currently eight listed companies from the cultural and creative industry in Hunan. They are CNS, DGC, Talkweb, TANGEL Culture, HappiGo, Huakai Creative, GosPell, and TVZ One.
International vision, going global brings new opportunities
With the deepening building of the “One Belt and One Road” and the acceleration of opening up, Hunan culture spends more efforts in “going global” work, and brings new opportunities to the development of cultural enterprises.
According to Gong Shuguang, CNS has sold more than 700 copyrights to Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia, and other countries along the “One Belt and One Road” in the past three years; undertook China’s first comprehensive education aid project, which made itself the first publishing company that designed a foreign country’s education system from the top, developed the textbooks and trained the teachers; established a joint venture with Frankfurt Book Fair called IPR License thatfilled the blank in the field of online copyright trading in China.
Bearing in mind the questions about “whether the books are published in the foreign countries after sold the copyright, whether the readers really like to read the books, whether reading the books really help expand China’s influence in foreign countries”, CNS constantly improve its products, make great effort on illustrating original Chinese stories in contemporary languages to the outside, fully use domestic foreign aids policies to build broadcasting channels for mainstream cultures, actively carry out overseas mergers and acquisitions, and promote capital to go global. "This is not only the responsibility of a state-owned cultural enterprise, but also the inevitable choice for the enterprise to become bigger and stronger, and to help Chinese culture go global and localize." Gong Shuguang said.
In 2017,
the cumulative import and export volume of Hunan's cultural trade totaled 2.292
billion USD, an increase of 73% year-on-year, of which
exports amounted to 2.252 billion USD, an increase of 71.5% year-on-year, and
both total volume and growth rate hit historical highs. Hunan cultural
enterprises, represented by CNS, actively explored new channels and models for
“going global” and continuously expanded foreign cooperation and exchange.