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In May 2017, Denmark and China signed a film co-production agreement, marking Denmark as the first and only Nordic country to establish such a treaty with China. Taking two recent China-Denmark film co-productions as examples, Bille August's The Chinese Widow (2017) and Lin Jianjie's Brief History of a Family (2024), this paper investigates why China chose to sign a film agreement with Denmark and vice versa. It also examines the cultural and film policies that catalysed the emergence and development of this new co-production partnership. This paper aims to address two emergent trends in transnational screen studies: conceptual engagement with soft power and transnational talent development. It discusses how cinema serves as an instrument for states, institutions, and corporations to mediate diplomatic and political goals, generate soft power, and engage in nation branding. This paper argues that the transformation in geopolitical relationships between these two countries and their respective film and cultural policies over the past decade has led to this new collaborative partnership. Furthermore, it suggests that the latest European cultural policies supporting Sino-European co-production and transnational talent development have facilitated Sino-Danish film co-production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an evaluation of the main characteristics of Chinese domestic cultural policy and international cultural trade strategy. The objective is to assess whether China has developed a type of pattern addressing the culture and trade issue, and to advance meaningful lessons to reconcile cultural diversity and trade liberalization in the context of international law. This paper starts with a brief introduction of Chinese cultural industries and Chinese cultural laws and policies. The analysis then dives into Chinese international agreements, including WTO agreements, the UNESCO Convention 2005, Chinese FTAs, and the BRI. Chinese international cultural practices can be grouped into cultural trade liberalization commitments and cultural cooperation mechanisms. This paper argues that China takes a cautious attitude towards liberalizing cultural trade while holding a relatively open position towards promoting cultural cooperation. The cultural cooperation approach deserves more attention as an alternative route for reconciling cultural diversity and free trade in international law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy with socialist characteristics has had a profound effect on China's cultural industries. This paper adopts a case study approach to illustrate the challenges that have shaped the administration of public museums as a consequence of China's economic reforms. By drawing upon an example of cross-cultural collaboration between Western cultural institutions and China's Nanjing Museum (南京博物院: nanjing bowuyuan), we uncover the tensions that exist between China's cultural policy preferences and the encroaching values of the market economy. In doing so, this article contributes towards a richer exposition of the local practices guiding cultural management, reflecting the broader challenges endemic among China's cultural industries. Primarily, we seek to illustrate how market imperatives have influenced local practices, creating a context unique to China that deviates from the central tenets of neoliberal development and market management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Great Tea Road (Wanli chadao) is a 13,000 km trade route that for two centuries connected Qing China and Tsarist Russia. It has been identified in recent years as an important category of China's route heritage. The rediscovery of the Great Tea Road, and other Chinese route heritage, is being framed in a 'mobility narrative', that is, a narrative that describes how mobility and exchange over space and time contribute to the formation of the Chinese nation or Zhonghua minzu. Since 2013 the Great Tea Road has been incorporated into the 'authorised mobility narrative' of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and in particular to the BRI agreement linking China, Mongolia and Russia. In 2019 the Great Tea Road was placed on the China list for World Heritage application. This paper examines the rise of the Great Tea Road in contemporary China and describes the various actors that play a formative role in developing the narratives and policies associated with such route heritage. It finds that the Chinese combination of 'mobility narrative' and 'heritage bureaucracy' provides a discursive and institutional frame that is able to mobilise significant resources in the pursuit of cultural policy and heritage diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the question of the restitution of lost cultural property is no longer a new one, the issue of recovering illegally excavated archaeological objects has recently become a subject of attention from the Chinese Government. This article is an in-depth study of the process of recovering illegally excavated archaeological objects from Japan for the first time. The detailed analysis of this particular case focuses on the following: analyzing the legal issues involved in this case; exploring the legal basis for recovering illegally excavated archaeological objects and the relevant issues concerning the potentially adopted solutions; and universal recommendations on recovering archaeological objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's cultural policy has been a key driver to the formation and development of the domestic digital game industry. In line with the nationwide promotion of "Mass Entrepreneurship and Innovation" since 2015 (He et al., 2019), there has witnessed an increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship in the related cultural policies at the local level, especially in China's major cities known for high-tech creative clusters. Focusing on the thriving gaming entrepreneurship in Shanghai, this article adopts an entrepreneurial ecosystem approach to examine the under-studied relationship between the creation of gaming ventures and the relevant set of cultural policy. Drawing on 33 gaming entrepreneur interviews complemented by policy content, this article provides rich accounts of how gaming entrepreneurs react to and reflect on the local cultural policy in relation to two key elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem: financial capital availability and support services. The findings shed new light on creative autonomy and cultural policy in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]