ABSTRACT
Beijing celebrated its First Cultural Creative Industries Expo from 10 to 14December 2006. It was a spectacular and diverse event, launchedwith great ceremony at the Great Hall of the People adjacent to Tiananmen Square, concluding in the Sheraton Great Wall Hotel where propaganda officials spoke enthusiastically of creative excellence and the shift from ‘Made in China’ to ‘Created in China’. Beijing’s 10 designated cultural creative clusters were announced in the final ceremony. Following a flurry of contract signing to demonstrate the success of the occasion, a throng of photographers recorded the presentation of large-size silver plaques. This was an auspicious time. Even though Shanghai had already celebrated its second Annual International Creative Industries Week a month earlier, Beijing’s coming of age in the creative economy signified a deepening of the creative zeitgeist. However, this was not an auspicious occasion for those who had built their reputation on promoting the cultural industries concept. The cultural industries ‘school’ now had to accept a weakening of their position in the queue for government patronage as independent and enterprising entrepreneurs moved forward to validate the state’s call for independent innovation.
