2025 Cultural Industry Profit Rises 7.3%, Smaller Firms Outpace Growth

The National Bureau of Statistics released its 2025 report on the development of the national culture and related industries. The report shows that China's cultural and related industry enterprises are simultaneously expanding in scale and improving quality and efficiency. In 2025, the cultural industry achieved total profit of RMB 1,903.4 billion, an increase of 7.3% year on year. Among them, enterprises above designated size realized total profit of RMB 1,393.3 billion, up 5.6%, while enterprises below designated size achieved total profit of RMB 510.1 billion, up 12.2%.

In recent years, cultural enterprises have risen rapidly under the combined effect of policy support, market demand, and the rapid development of digital and intelligent technology. Enterprises have continuously increased R&D investment, integrating cutting-edge digital and intelligent technology with excellent traditional Chinese culture and mainstream values, constantly creating high-quality cultural products. At the same time, some backbone enterprises have explored diversified overseas pathways. Domestically produced games, animation works, and online literature have continued to expand global markets, and cultural dissemination has shifted from single content export to co-creation and sharing with the global market. While achievements have been made, certain problems remain.

For example, the lack of leading cultural enterprises to integrate the industry chain means that although there are outstanding cultural products, they do not generate the corresponding 'long-tail effect'; the integration of traditional heritage and modern technology remains at the level of formal stacking, failing to achieve a true organic unity of technology and cultural connotation; in the process of cultural going global, there is a shortage of internationally versatile talent and more effective marketing strategies.

In terms of policy and factor support, incentives are needed to encourage enterprises to break free from the production model of content creators, explore paths for extending high-quality cultural content to physical platforms, and cultivate backbone enterprises to become leading cultural enterprises with Chinese characteristics. Institutional safeguards should be improved in areas such as copyright protection and cross-border integration. Taking Pop Mart as an example, guided by IP copyright protection and cross-border integration policies, it broke the traditional single sales model of toys and promoted Chinese trendy toy culture globally. Attract small cultural enterprises to settle in idle assets such as vacant factories with low rents, forming cultural parks; include new types of talent such as illustrators and IP operation experts into local star talent directories, and implement relevant talent treatment in terms of home purchase qualifications, salary subsidies, and personal income tax.

In terms of digital and intelligent transformation, during the R&D stage, cultural enterprises place the cultural products to be developed on the market in the form of short videos, forming pre-judgments based on user feedback data. During the promotion stage, they use AIGC to produce different forms of promotional materials, and based on big data and platform user profiles, precisely push the most suitable promotional materials to specific audience groups. Cultural enterprises open an 'AIGC content middle platform' to allow fans and third-party authors to engage in secondary creation, maintaining the long-term popularity of cultural products. For example, NetEase, in the operation of its products such as 'Eggy Party', configured a material generation platform, encouraging players to widely participate in secondary creation and spread on social media, extending the social popularity and lifecycle of the product.

In terms of international marketing and talent, adhere to localized creation, produce documentaries, micro-documentaries, films and TV series and other adapted products, and collaborate with local teams to achieve localized expression. For example, when miHoYo promoted 'Genshin Impact' overseas, it established a 'Creator Sponsorship Program', leveraging high-traffic streamers and community moderators on overseas media for localized promotion, helping the Chinese cultural elements embedded in the game to break through globally. Deepen personnel exchanges, and focus on cultivating regional and national communication talents who are deeply rooted in specific regions, proficient in language and culture, and familiar with the media ecosystem.