(Speech by Meng Xiaosi)

With the ever-developing scientific technology nowadays, the development of network and multimedia technologies has ushered in a brand-new information era. In the 1980s, we still marveled at the information explosion; and in the 1990s, the new technological revolution built the information highway for us. We all feel that we have already entered the information era. The fast development of digital and multimedia technologies and the wide use of the Internet greatly expand the scope, raise the speed and change the pattern of information communication, pushing the modern information revolution to a higher level. The powerful capability of transmitting, communicating and sharing information breaks the limitation of time and space, and the sudden advent of information era makes the earth we are in so small that it is just like a small village at one end of which you can hear the bark of a dog at the other end.

It is the booming information technology that influences people's ways of production, living and thinking widely and profoundly, and every field of social life, including the cultural life. The modern information revolution brings about not only the new economic pattern - digital and network economy, but also a new cultural pattern - digital and network culture. The use of new technologies in the field of culture fosters many novel cultural patterns, opens up unfamiliar domains of traditional culture, and promotes the development of human civilization. As we all know, most cultural products are a kind of content production and feature the inherited supposition, and are thus thought to be most suitable for online production, circulation and consumption. Those cultural products may be produced, transacted and consumed on the Internet, and thus, the Internet culture market is becoming one of the markets, which conform to the nature of the Internet world, just as Da Vinci, a scientist as well as an artist, said: "Art needs the wings of technology to fly high." The noumenal, economic and technological patterns are undergoing revolution. Promoting the prosperity and the innovation of Chinese culture by grasping the pulse of the times and conforming to the trend of new technologies is an important subject we face today.

With the development of information technology, on the one hand, the concept of the information network keeps expending, television, telecommunications and computer network are penetrating and merging with one another, and lack of content obstructs the development of information industry; on the other hand, the bandwidth of the network is expanding rapidly, the modes of information communication are undergoing revolution, from narrowband to broadband and from one-directional communication to interactive communication, making the problem of content shortage more protruding. A series of information technology revolutions call for revolution in information content. According to experts, the information revolution is in the transformation from hardware-dominant to software-dominant and from network-dominant to content dominant. To some extent, the development and existence of network industry depend on the creation and consumption of content. Network is just trunk, and content is soul. Undoubtedly, the future of the broadband industry is based on the content industry. As a result, the pattern change of the information industry requires the intensive involvement of the culture industry, and the upgrade of the network industry requires the historical debut of the content industry.

The low level of technology has always been the bottleneck of the development of the culture industry, and the lack of content, the bottleneck of the development of information industry. The development of information technology provides new possibility for the booming development of our culture industry, and the growth of the content industry on a worldwide basis creates new opportunities for the upgrade of China's information industry. On the one hand, advanced culture calls for high tech. We shall open up new paths for the culture industry or even the overall construction of spiritual civilization through employing technological applications and innovations, mobilizing high-tech talents and taking high-tech measures to integrate and promote all kinds of human resources, and provide modern information culture products. On the other hand, high tech calls for advanced culture. We shall open up new fields for the information industry or even the national economy to break the technology bottleneck of the culture industry and the content bottleneck of the information industry through the development and innovation of content, and the aggregation of advanced culture talents to enrich advanced culture and turn the scale of unilateral development of current information technology so as to thoroughly remove technological poverty in the culture industry and cultural poverty in the IT industry, realize the marriage between high-tech and advanced culture and realize the joint booming development of China's IT industry and culture industry.

On May 7, 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao emphasized in the State Council standing conference the importance of fostering new consumption hotspot and economic growth point and also included online culture and entertainment into it. Developing new pattern of culture industry - information culture industry - that conforms to the world's new economic and technological patterns is one of the important strategic aims of the development of information economy. Information content industry, as a new field of culture industry with great potential, has drawn the attention of nations across the world and people from all walks of life, based on which modern IT industry is no longer a sheer IT industry, but the unification of information technology industry and information content industry. The culture industry can realize booming development only if it combines with the information industry, informationization drives industrialization and industrialization promotes informationization. The only way for China to construct its culture and realize the harmonious development between high tech and advanced culture is to disseminate advanced culture with advanced scientific technologies. We shall seize the opportunities brought about by the Internet to ensure fast development, strengthen management, promote the strategic cooperation between information and culture industries, guide the integrated development of network and content industries, and enhance the fast and sound development of information content industry and network culture industry.

We are on the threshold of a new era. The hardware and network competitions in the current IT industry are being replaced by the software and content competitions. The international competitions of digital culture and information content are becoming the strategic competitions of economy and culture. We hope to rapidly develop Chinese information resources, change our rich and profound traditional resources and modern culture products into digital culture products, endeavor to create and exploit rich and healthy network culture products, build a huge system of culture information resources, gradually change the situation of the lack of Chinese information on the Internet, and form the overall advantages of Chinese culture on the Internet. The new information technology brings about fundamental revolutions to the production and dissemination of culture, while the use of modern equipment and methods expand the space for various kinds of cultural and art activities. We shall adapt to the development of new high technology as soon as possible, master and take measures of modern communication, extend the influence of excellent culture products by taking advantage of information highway to make people in different areas, especially those in western and central China and remote and poor regions, enjoy the equal rights concerning cultural resources. We shall endeavor to increase governmental investment, encourage active participation of all the forces of the society, build the prevalent service system of culture information, base on public cultural places and center on Internet access service places to eliminate digital gap, promote resources sharing and enable more people to create and share better culture. We shall have an opener attitude to join the international society and to enlarge the international cultural communication and cooperation.

As for the development of the culture industry, we suggest combining further reform with structural adjustment and development, giving priority to developing the information culture industry, and speeding up the strategic structural adjustment of the culture industry. We shall renovate and promote the traditional culture industry with high new technologies and advanced, practical technologies, accelerate the development of high-tech culture industry and new culture industry; particularly, we shall seize the opportunity of digital culture revolution brought about by the high-tech revolution worldwide to step up the innovation of cultural technologies, enhance international cooperation, raise technological content of culture products and services, increase contributions of science and technology to cultural development and push forward Chinese digital content industry and network culture industry to form an industrial pattern dominated by the information culture industry and with the overall development of various types of culture industries, and upgrade the traditional culture industry to a modern one. We shall promote the legislation of the culture industry and improve the related policies to provide a sound framework for the network culture industry; improve the culture market system and the mechanism of market management to provide a wide market operating platform for the network culture industry; fight against unlawful dealings and protect intellectual property rights to make a healthy culture market environment for the network culture industry. We welcome domestic software developers, network operators and content providers to participate in the development of the network culture industry to develop a series of excellent network cultural products with world advanced technological level and independent intellectual property rights and to develop a large number of excellent network products with healthy contents and rich forms, so as to realize the unification of high tech and top quality, catch up with the world level in the terms of technology and content, continuously lift the industry's level and improve its image so as to develop our country into a super power of information content industry and make the network culture industry as an important force to fuel economy. We shall, together with some relevant departments, make certain the orientation of the network culture industry, including online games, establish more favorable policies, launch more programs and key projects, support a group of incubation bases and experimental parks, establish a group of excellent Web sites and enterprises and nurture a group of high talents and famous brands, enhance the development and use of cultural information resources, promote the continuous speedy and healthy development of our information culture industry to transform our advantages of rich resources and huge market to industry and competition advantages and develop our country from a giant of cultural resources to a giant of culture industry and from a huge cultural market to a culture producer.

The improvement of the society requires us to strengthen the management of network culture. To some extent, the Internet goes beyond the limitation of time and space, and virtually forms a transnational cultural market, posing a big challenge to the supervision over the online culture market. The traditional ways of management are obviously not suitable for the development of culture, and we shall make good use of advanced management theories, modes and measures to adjust and guide the culture market, promote the e-governmental affairs, make decision-making more scientific and management more standardized through information-facilitated management, and realize real shift from experience management to scientific management. The current problems concerning network culture cannot be neglected, and some problems are even serious. For example, harmful contents, particularly online violence and sex, seriously affect the minor's physical and mental health, cause a series of social problems, and always draw attention of the society. Intellectual property rights are another problem - prevalent Internet piracy and infringement of authors' rights. The nations worldwide are looking for ways to effectively manage the online culture. We propose combining the long-term management with the centralized control, establishing the industry association, encouraging the social supervision, tightening control on the online culture and establishing the system of governmental management, industry self-discipline, social supervision and law-abiding enterprise operation.

Chinese culture is vast and profound, and a kind of rich cultural resources; Chinese culture is unique, and the special cultural differences form the advantages of comparison; Chinese culture has the far-reaching influence, and the world has the largest number of Chinese speakers, making China a cultural market with the greatest potential. With the development of economy and the improvement of the society, Chinese people sees increasing per capita income, have more time for entertainment and have more spiritual need for culture, so the network culture market has a great potential and a bright future. With the deepening of the reform and open-up, the development of high tech, and China's entry into the World Trade Organization, the network culture industry will enjoy more opportunities. Now, we should notice that our fledging network industry is in a period full of controversies and risks. Only if the governmental departments, industrial insiders and people from all walks of life join effort together can the network culture industry keep sustainable healthy development. Let us really take on proper social responsibilities and the mission of the times to strengthen cooperation and contribute to the prosperity of network culture and the development of content industry.