Michael Keane

• Professor at Curtin University

The rapid development of digital technology infrastructure in the People’s Republic of China, together with the government’s recent support of grassroots innovation, has led to a growing mood of techno-nationalism as well as a feeling that digital technology can play an important role in renovating China’s international image. Powerful internet com...

This article investigates the relationship between television formats, cultural security and China’s ‘going out’ policy. Cultural security is a term used within Chinese policy circles to advocate the strengthening of media and cultural pursuits with a view to making them effective instruments of national ‘soft power’, a term coined by Joseph Nye (1...

In this paper, we chart the development of creative cities from urban clusters through to ‘characteristic towns’, the latter typology reflecting a government desire to build distinctive cultural brands. We illustrate how this recent development iteration has played out in Hangzhou and its relationship to Internet+, a policy blueprint introduced by...

Keane illustrates the fundamental concepts of creativity and creativity industries with the rising trend of a state-dominated model as represented by China. This chapter discusses the “creativity” element in the cultural-creative industries by returning to the fundamental question of how creativity interacts with the market and economics. Keane als...

Dramatic changes have occurred in Chinese society over the past three decades. Many of these changes are attributable to the government’s economic reforms presided over, firstly by MAO Zedong’s successor DENG Xiaoping, and following DENG, JIANG Zemin, HU Jintao and XI Jinping. In this chapter, we focus on changes that have led to a revised understa...

The advent of new media technologies has changed how people watch, engage with, and share digital media. Conventionally, audiences were surveyed selectively, and the results were collated by professional agencies and often kept confidential. However, the conspicuous ratings given to media and cultural products outside their country of origin and th...

The authors examine how Chinese film and television companies have collaborated with their counterparts in South Korea during the past decade. The first part of the chapter challenges the concept of cultural and media ‘flows’, arguing that processes and technologies have probably been more instrumental in transforming the Chinese media industries....

Der potenzielle Nutzen von industrieller Clusterbildung wird von Politikern, Stadtplanern und Wirtschaftsgeografen gleichermaßen gemeinhin anerkannt. Cluster sind interessant für politische Entscheidungsträger, da sie offensichtlich die Möglichkeit bieten, Ballungszentren mit Innovation und Humankapital mit Investition zu verbinden. Stadtplaner seh...

div class="title">Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture and Globalization Fan Yang Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2016 xvi + 284 pp. £21.99 ISBN 978-0-253-01846-5 - Volume 228 - Michael Keane

This article looks at the role of format television in the People’s Republic of China. It juxtaposes two key ideas: the ‘one format policy’ and the One Child Policy. Both are government restrictions intended to kerb reproduction. Formats provide a means for the reproduction of programming ideas, that is, they are generative. When formats ‘fit’ cult...

This article investigates the significant re-orientation of audio-visual production in East Asia over the last few years brought about by the rise of China, beginning with the proposition that unprecedented change is occurring in East Asian media production. While the ‘Sinophone world’ has been the locus of critical analysis in the past, all eyes a...

This article focuses on how Chinese media industries have sought to expand into new territories, identifying several mechanisms by which Chinese cultural and media products are traded and consumed: namely finished content, co-productions, formats and online platforms. The article also considers the value of overseas location shooting for domestic p...

While a rich body of literature in television and film studies and media policy studies has tended to focus on the media activities in the formal sector, we know much less about informal media activities, their influence on state policies, as well as the dynamics between the formal and the informal sectors. This article examines these issues with r...

Recognising that creativity is a major driving force in the post-industrial economy, the Chinese government has recently established a range of "creative clusters" - industrial parks devoted to media industries, and arts districts - in order to promote the development of the creative industries. This book examines these new creative clusters, outli...

The paper investigates the geographical mobility of creative workers in China, focusing on the authors' survey of workers in the animation industry. More specifically, the authors use the Reilly-Converse model and GIS tools to probe the locational choices of Chinese animation workers in Beijing and Shanghai by analyzing such factors of spatial attr...

Two Australian researchers specializing in China's creative industries examine recent developments in southern China commonly associated with the shanzhai phenomenon (e.g., production and sale of cheap local facsimiles of globally branded goods). While shanzhai is often condemned as the embodiment of China's "knock-off" industries, the authors argu...

This article addresses the permeability of the field of China media research and its openness to new ideas; it argues that we need to adopt a wide angle view on research opportunities. Expansion of China's media during the past decade has opened up possibilities for broadening the field. The discussion first identifies boundary tensions as the fiel...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: On the evening of August 8, 2008, viewers of the Beijing Olympic Games opening ceremony witnessed the most impressively coordinated launch of any major global event. Superbly choreographed by the film director Zhang Yimou, the lavish spectacle was infused with color, symbolic meaning,...

The discussion begins with a discussion of soft power and creativity in contemporary China. The article then examines three development trajectories: territory, technology and taste. The third section examines the effects of taste in more detail through examples of China's creativity in art, philosophy and technology primarily in three key periods,...

Dramatic content, including imported drama, comprises almost half of the broadcast time on Chinese television.1 The considerable viewer appetite for TV drama on the Mainland, however, does not necessarily translate into high quality output that captures export markets. In fact, the apparent advantage of large numbers is undermined by market fragmen...

Internationalization is a key to the success of television formats. To understand format trade it is necessary to draw out distinctions between formats and genre. Engines— innovations in programming engineered by format devisors—allow formats to regenerate and hybridize across genres. The core principle of formats, however, is the practice of franc...

This chapter argues that there are two ways of reframing the globalization of culture. The first follows the time-honored model, referred to here as 'the economics of foreign programmes'. The emphasis is on the sale of finished cultural goods and services in international markets. The second accounts more for intermediate inputs and the transfer of...

This chapter examines the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in urban China, focusing mainly on their impact on social life. The key question raised by this study is how the Internet and mobile technologies are affecting the way people make use of urban space. The chapter begins with some background to China's emergenc...

This chapter addresses some of the strategies that producers and networks adopt to offset the tide of audience fragmentation and advertiser apathy. These include advertorials, magazine and lifestyle shows, tie-ins, product placement, and various forms of merchandizing. The chapter begins by describing some of the strategies that have emerged in the...

The success of the United States in global media and advertising markets forms a common theme within cultural studies and political economy. Hollywood continues to relentlessly impose its presence on “weaker” cultures. Franchise capitalism has reproduced Starbucks, Disney product stores, and McDonald's in the United Kingdom, in Europe, and in East...

This chapter examines the development of television systems and categories of programming in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In these countries, television viewing has established an important connection to people's lives. Local production has responded accordingly with the consolidation in recent years of local industrie...

TV-format adaptation process is a mechanism of flexible, leaner production and a response to evolving industry practices. In addition, the format generates greater traction for television producers by providing new ways of connecting with audiences. This chapter differentiates format from genre and shows how the television-format business has gener...

The advent of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Millionaire) marked out a new stage in the history of both the quiz-show genre and the international format trade. In blending audience participation, a gladiatorial atmosphere, and intense psychological pressure to choose between similar answers, the show reinvigorates the myth of the heroic challenger...

This chapter examines the fascination with Idol formats, including industrial formats as well as generic variants and clones. It examines the evolution of Idol shows in China and Hong Kong, focusing on the Super Girl phenomenon within China. While talent formats sound familiar in the light of the global Idol franchise, they were a new phenomenon in...

Adaptation has become the prime currency of contemporary television markets, particularly when ideas are transferred across cultural borders. The need to create compelling content has remained central, even if the adaptations in question have frequently taken advantage of limited international copyright protection. The key issue is the relationship...

This chapter examines the strategies for export growth and the role of TV franchises and formats in extending audio-visual markets. It begins with a discussion on some of the inherent problems within the political economy of media tradition when it is applied to East Asia, and offers new ways of thinking through processes of cultural translation an...

This chapter explores the relationship between quiz shows and economic development. It begins with a brief discussion of the penetration of such shows within Asia and then examines the social impact when traditional understandings of knowledge intersect with contemporary knowledge capitalism. The chapter also analyzes how imported formats, particul...

This chapter examines the influence of reality-television formats in East Asia and looks at how they function as alternative models of program investment and production. While reality television is a product of European and North American television systems, it has a different provenance in East Asian society. Reality television provides a fresh al...

This chapter focuses on the legal mechanisms for protecting TV-program formats. The practice of imitation in media industries has led the way in policing copyright protection. When writers of TV formats, producers, or broadcasters seek to protect their investment, they have to rely on cobbling together a jigsaw of pieces drawn from different areas...

In this chapter I trace the development of the idea of creativity in China and the associated concept of creative industries. I will argue that the creative industries in China need to be understood in the context of sustainable development and reform over a long period of development. I argue that creativity is a ‘super-sign’ in China; it is inves...

This article asks if China can develop a truly creative economy and follow the lead of South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. If the benefits flowing from the creative economy (and creative industries) are so strategic to government, we need to ask what impact this re‐evaluation of creativity will have on a country often identified as...

The impact of 'creative industries' is being felt in Asia as government, business, and universities attempt to harness the benefits of consumer demand for creative content --from wireless software that allows mobile phone users to download classical Chinese poetry to massive multiplayer gaming (MMG) online software that has led to a mini boom in re...

In describing the state of play of television formats in China in this chapter I will therefore look at how formats have assumed an important development role. To illustrate the changing television environment in the context of formatting I use the concepts of mimetic isomorphism and R&D. These two ideas capture two sides of format activity in Chin...

This paper looks at the growing trend towards television format adaptation as an industry development strategy in China. As China's television industry professionals imagine a commercial future, this vision is tempered by the reality of a deficit of quality content. Program schedules exhibit limited variety and are dominated by cheap variety show f...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The BRISBANE’S CREATIVE INDUSTRIES 2003 report is a project commissioned by the Brisbane City Council. This report is divided into 5 sections: 1. Creative Industries – A Brief Overview 2. Employment in the Creative Industries 3. Financial Dimensions 4. The Brisbane "Hotspots" 5. Conclusions The first section, "Creative Industries...

This chapter explores the way in which forms of popular culture influenced by globalization are impacting upon Chinese citizenship. The example that I will draw on is the hugely successful popular singing talent show, Super Girl (chaoji nusheng), produced by Hunan Satellite TV in southern China, and broadcast nationally in 2005. In this popularity...

While imagination feeds breakthroughs in every field of human endeavour, creativity is a defining characteristic of working the arts, media, and design professions. The capabilities of creative people are therefore sought in the burgeoning global service industries; a wellspring of the innovation that provides long-term sustainability for communiti...

This chapter provides an overview of cultural exchange in China during the imperial period (221 BC- 1911 AD). The discussion begins with a discussion of three development trajectories which I call territory, technology and taste. The second section examines the effects of taste in more detail through examples of China's creativity in art, philosoph...

This article examines the recent interest in creativity within China. It identifies a desire on the part of China’s cultural intellectuals and cadres to exploit the economic benefits of contemporary cultural markets and to be part of a new growth phenomenon called the “creative economy”. The way to make China competitive appears to be through the c...

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