On June 2, a lecture entitled “Creative Chinese Culture and the Creative Industry in the Web 2.0 Age” was held in room 238 at the main teaching building by the Confucius institute in cooperation with the Asia Research Institute of Portland State University. Professor Wang Jin, also the dean of the Foreign Language and Literature Department of MIT and the head of the Chinese Strategic International project made the speech.  

It was said that the concept of creative industry was first mentioned in the document “The Route of British Creative Industry”. In this document, the concept of creative industry is defined as seeking to transform abstract culture into “delicate industry”, which means to have high economic value. This is a process of creating productivity by knowledge and intellect.  

Professor Wang Jin introduced some features of the Chinese creative industry as well as the industry as a whole. On the issue of “Chinese Netizen Creativity”, Professor Wang listed as examples some products of non-professionals, such as the online writer, online music composer, online singer, the Flash adopted in ads and DV on tudou.com. Wang pointed out that consumers, producers and academics have begun to pay attention to the creative industry in China. The development of the whole industry has been very fast, but, there were still some problems in monitoring and regulating.   

The lecture was welcomed by more than 100 attendees. They actively engaged in asking questions and the atmosphere was full of excitement. It was the third in a series of consecutive lectures on“Modern China” started in the Spring semester in 2008 at the Confucius institute at Portland State University. (Contributed by the Confucius institute at Portland State University)