During China’s ‘Two Sessions’ gathering, an annual event led by Xi Jinping to deliver major policy announcements with significant constitutional revisions, Yan Meirong, deputy to the National People’s Congress, proposed to issue an implementation plan on the integration of digital collections and tourism.
According to Meirong, integrating digital collections in areas of tourism and museums would be of great significance to the nation, as it could lift up the tourism industry, fuel the city’s creative economy and pass down traditional culture to China’s youth. In addition, according to China News Network, data shows that the annual growth rate of China’s digital collection market is 150% and is estimated to reach a market value of 30 billion RMB (4.3 billion USD) by 2026.
“But generally speaking, there is still a big gap between my country’s in-depth development of digital collections of cultural tourism resources and the balanced development of regions,” stated Meirong, deputy to the National People’s Congress.
Arguing that there is a lack of sufficient knowledge of digital collectibles, as well as a lack of relevant policy support and incentives, she called for laws and regulations related to digital collections to be promulgated as soon as possible to effectively guide the development of cultural tourism digital collections. Specifically, she called on relying on existing well-known digital collection platforms to draw from their experience and build an official platform for government-led digital collections, integrating social, cultural and tourism resources.
In addition, Meirong stated that it would be possible to explore an innovative profit model that integrates digital collections with physical cultural tourism industries. For instance, digital collections can tap into a plethora of cultural relics to develop collectibles with strong market appeal and storytelling. At the same time, museum curators can cooperate with various digital collection platforms to develop digital collections that promote ancient crafts from intricate ancestral brick carvings to the traditional Chinese folk art of paper cutouts.
