ABSTRACT

Cultural development is one of the most recent and distinctive models of Chinese modernization. In the West, cultural development entails a strong relationship between the regeneration of post-industrial cities and the development of cultural/creative industries through place branding and local economic development. Central to the Chinese claim on this is the development of creative clusters. This includes the authorization of the use of inner city spaces by creative industries and to use this as a model to regenerate other parts of the city. As a result, in less than a decade, a city like Shanghai has gone from small-scale cultural production scattered in warehouses and factories to large, concentrated clusters of creative industries spread right across the city. However, the role of culture in rejuvenating urban decay in the context of Chinese socialist market reforms has to be mediated by the state. The transformation of creative clusters in Shanghai is metaphoric to a reconfiguration of the relationship between culture, market and policy in China.