China's new cultural industries are outpacing the old ones as new business forms rapidly emerge, from digital content and online entertainment to smart cultural services, according to data from National Bureau of Statistics released Friday.
Taken together, operating revenue of major cultural companies achieved 10.82 trillion yuan (about 1.63 trillion U.S. dollars) in the first nine months of 2026, up 4.3 percent year on year.
Within that, 16 “new business forms” generated 5.38 trillion yuan (about 808 billion U.S. dollars) -- or about half of all revenue from major cultural enterprises. Growing at 8.9 percent, they also outpaced the sector as a whole by more than twofold.
The NBS survey of China’s 83,000 major cultural enterprises shows growth is increasingly concentrated in digital-first, new-model businesses. That widening gap signals where China’s cultural consumption is heading.
"It is worth noting that the leading and driving role of new cultural business forms has become more prominent. Industries such as digital publishing, copyright and cultural software services, and Internet advertising services have achieved double-digit growth in operating income in the first three quarters. New business forms and industries continue to gain development momentum," said Pan Xuhua, a statistician with the NBS.
The newly released data also indicate that cultural services have been booming in the year, while manufacturing and retail have slipped. Cultural service revenue jumped 7.3 percent year on year to roughly 6.57 trillion yuan in the first nine months. Cultural manufacturing fell 2.1 percent to 2.67 trillion yuan and cultural wholesale and retail edged down 0.1 percent to 1.58 trillion yuan.
The NBS also distinguishes between "core" cultural sectors -- broadcasting, film, cultural heritage and other sectors that directly produce cultural content -- and "culture-related" sectors, which are the supporting and peripheral activities that serve cultural production.
The core sectors have been the outperformer of the year, with business revenue reaching 7.5 trillion yuan, an increase of 5.1 percent over the same period last year. Profits of the culture-related sectors achieved about 3.32 trillion yuan, an increase of 2.4 percent.
China's cultural industry revenue tops 10 trln yuan from Jan to Sept as new business forms surge
