China enhances national image on cultural front

Jan. 9, Chinese artists and writers have vowed to enhance the country's image through improving their works and expanding foreign exchanges.

They said, at two symposiums on Tuesday, that they felt double missions on their shoulders to enhance development and innovation in their own fields and to present China as a harmonious socialist society, Beijing-based Guangming Daily reported.

"We took it as a historical mission and pragmatic issue building up our national image," some artists and writers told a symposium in Beijing on "the national image in literature and art works".

They urged their counterparts across the country to integrate personal pursuit with national development, the newspaper said.

At another symposium, also held in Beijing, Qinghua University professor Xiong Chengyu said: "only by showing more creativity in foreign cultural exchanges, can we present a developing image and pitch a clear voice of China in the world's diversified culture."

"Cultural exchange is an important way to showcase national image, and thus an indispensable component of China's diplomatic work," said Ke Yasha, an official with the Ministry of Culture at the symposium on "Communicating Across Cultures: the Arts Shape World-Views".

Chinese President Hu Jintao, in his report to the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), called for bringing about a new upsurge in socialist cultural development, stimulating the cultural creativity of the whole nation, and enhancing culture as part of the soft power of China.

In addition to efforts of creating more original cultural products, China also strived to protect the intellectual property rights (IPR) of those works.

In 2007, China launched an all-out campaign against the violation of IPR, with ten major crackdowns in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou cities as well as in Guizhou, Anhui, Sichuan and Fujian provinces, announced the Ministry of Culture on Tuesday.

China's local cultural market watchdogs in Beijing cracked down31 wholesale shops and 23 storage localities for pirated audio-visual products and seized 108,000 items of such products, according to the ministry.

In a similar strike in Shanghai last April, 610,000 items of illegal audio-visual products were confiscated, and Guangzhou seized roughly the same number of illegal products in October, the ministry said.

Source: chinaview