 We are speaking on the topic of the cultural industries and cultural policy in Asia. We have two speakers who are going to give us perspectives on cultural industries and policy, respectively in China and Korea, and they'll be talking about the similarities, the differences, and also the relationships between the industries and policy in those two countries. So I'm delighted to welcome today Professors Anthony Fung and Professors Shin Dong Kim. So it's quite a rare pleasure to have two in one, two for the price of one, two speakers in the same seminar. So what we're going to do today is to ask each speaker to start by giving a short presentation of 20 minutes or so. What I'll do is I'll introduce them separately and I encourage everybody who's listening, please, to write your questions for the speakers in the Q&A box that you see at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Write your questions as they occur to you, please, while the speakers are talking. And what we'll do is we'll listen to both presentations and then we'll take all the questions together so we can get something of conversation going. All right, so without further ado, our first speaker, Anthony Fung, real pleasure to have you with us. Anthony Fung is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and also Professor in the School of Art and Communication at Beijing Normal University. Anthony's research and teaching focus on popular culture, youth identities, cultural industries and digital media. And he has a series of books out in the past few years. One important one is Youth Cultures in China, two recent books on the gaming industries, one taking a global perspective and one specifically focusing on Hong Kong. And the most recent book is Made in Hong Kong Studies in Popular Music, which is already a central reading for some of my students. But his talk today is going to focus on the gaming industries in China. So over to you, Professor Fung. Thank you. Let me share my screen first. Actually, first of all, I would like to offend Xindong Kim. He was in our school for the last semester, so we talk a thousand times and then we also collaborate earlier on on writing issues about cultural industries in Asia. So this time, I was invited by Rachel and then I thought, okay, maybe we should do something more interactive this time. So that's why I picked a topic on cultural policy and gaming industry in China. And this topic, in fact, is highly related to Korean cultural industries. So that's why I invited Xindong to come and I think our talks complement to each other. So let's talk about the gaming industry. Okay, this is, these tools are my former books on game industries. Today's talks are based on some of the points here and I added some new development of the game industries and culture policy in China. And I want to say that I'm not just a scholar. I'm also the consultant of the Hong Kong Game Industry Association. And until a week ago, I was still the director of a new third game company in Hong Kong. So I actually had an involvement with some of the game business. So that's why I could like, sometimes I know more about industries by interviewing the key people in the industries. So now let's focus on today's talk, which is the cultural policy in China. And I want to use it as an example for cultural industries. And game industry is actually not too much different from other like creating industries in China. And the characteristic is that it is highly driven by top down policies of the government of the PRC. And therefore, South Korea is really important because like the model of cultural industry created industries in South Korea is always regarded as a good example for Chinese government. So in fact, like in game industries, a lot of the early development of the culture policy, in fact, is in is modeling the Korean side. Although this is kind of perception and Korean, like the Chinese government always perceived that Korean government has a really strong national policy on game. So that's why they want to repeat the same story. Like cultural policy, like always, like for China also South Korea for other countries. In fact, I would say like in some, they are there are two major purpose that I would emphasize in talk first is about nationalism. That is a kind of like, like soft power for the China for China. And it's mostly about the financial side, like it's a kind of they say export on it. But nationalism is also about China itself like, in fact, game content can also be good examples of like, like incubated people, good values and, and, and so that's why it involved issues like censorship and content control. I would say like in the very beginning as a cultural studies scholar. In fact, in this area, people try to like, like, be uncritical of the so called cultural policy, say, like for me, I'm a cultural studies scholar and, and sometimes I like step over I also do cultural policy research. Like always remind myself, like cultural policy is not just for industry. Sometimes we should be like taking a, like a critical look at the policy say, could it create more cultural politics, more inequality, more power politics, or the industry or, or between industry and industries. And in fact, like, like, in the early days, when, when there's no, there was no, like tradition of so called cultural policy people talk about political economy, and at that time people were really critical. But now it seems that like the whole spectrum actually went to, to, towards the other side is the kind of development on the industries with the support of the culture policy. And so that's why I try to like have a kind of balance wheel between cultural studies and political economy when I do this policy studies. And what is cultural industry, like for China and basically the early thinking about cultural industry is just a kind of export or GDP. That is a kind of like soft power. In general, Asia and world and article about the four creative industries in China, music, game, film, comic or animations, and each of the industries actually share their own characteristics. I would say game industries are used, like used to, like used to be their own, the most profitable, profitable industries for China, like, like, it's not just internal, but also like, like the export of games to other countries as well. And, and that they come like industries model is always regarded as kind of Korean model in the early days, although like he is going to say that that may not be true. Okay. The second is about like comic animation industry. And, and it is commercially the least successful, simply because like comic animations in China is regarded as a commodity, not for adults, not for adolescents, but for like young kids. So in fact, for young kids, they don't care, like they cannot generate a lot of bags, unlike Japan. Most of the animation comics are for ads. So that's why they generate a lot of revenues from that. So so like for China is national for music industry, I would say is the most popular one. And, and this import and export of music and music for China has for a long time. Propaganda as well as for entertainment purpose. So this is the mostly a mixed industry for them. The film is highly like more monopolized by the state, because the content is regarded as a kind of political tool, rather than a commercial product. No, no, I try to focus more on game. But the issue is always like that. There are always two major theoretical dimension. First is globalization. In fact, people see that like in China see like game as a way to boost, say the local market, local industry, local development, and when it is export to other countries, then you could bring GDP revenues to China. And second, it's about political control and state ideologies. When there's a content, there must be some kind of control or regulations at least. And sometimes the first one and the second ones are contradictory, but I wouldn't emphasize that. In fact, people in this state talk too much about the control of the game in terms of content. If you, I admit, like a scholar actually reading those kind of like regulations, in fact, more, more regulations are talking about how to boost the industry, like the local market at state level, at provincial level, at city levels. In fact, the kind of like control, like political control, like high on regulations are not that much. In fact, there is kind of misconception. I want to highlight this in the very beginning. And let's say, like, think about it early days. Game is not like a kind of early development from China. In fact, in the early days, the most successful game industries in China are from Korea. So that's why in the early days, in fact, it's really dependent on foreign know-how management. And in the early days, in the early year 2000, there are a lot of import from Korea. In the early model, the early model is that in fact, the Korean game company actually have a lot of collaboration with the Chinese game companies. But the problem is that like the type of collaboration with these kind of global capital, the Korean capital, would like being a point of this kind of so-called reliance dependence on Korea. So that's why China tends to get rid of this kind of dependency as it goes along with this development. Second, it's more about the ideological control. Well, I want to skip a little bit because of time, but you can imagine what it's not about. So there's always, when we talk about game, it's always a dual nature of politics market. And when a profit is like in separable form, political control. And every game industry we have to think about is political economic limits. And there's always logic of all the game industry in China. I don't want to talk about that in detail, but you know that why game is so important in China is simply because if you compare the global box office, the theme box office, ticket sales, it's much smaller than the global game industry reference. No, no, it seems that we have a lot of research about the main industry films, actually, people all talk about things. But in fact, the research on game industry are much fewer and there are a lot much details about it. And Asia Pacific is always the highest, like the shares the highest game reference. And, and for China, they are, and for Asia as well. And it actually shares the most of them, the large number of global gamers in the world and much bigger than other markets, you can see. And the market is rising, you can see that. I want to skip this a little bit and you can tell that and is a lot of money. So in fact, when we talk about cultural policy, it's more about how the government actually give a kind of environment for the game industry to grow. And, and the second point is that it prevents other companies from going in to share the market. So now nowadays, like, like, almost a lot of like early Korean gaming street companies which like went into China. Now, now, many of them actually quit. And then, and then China actually started a lot of their own company and then export to Korea as well. There are three main, like, like I would say, my stones for China's cultural policy, which like the first one is two or two, when, when these kind of industries are not so prominent, and people don't get government, you know, what's what's game industry, and they don't know about that. So it's really peripheral. They start to think about how to promote it in the 10 five years plan in two or two. And like, like, just a few years later from 2006 to 2001. That like 11 five years plan is the major step for the development of game industries in China. And then you actually need more those a lot of so called policies on cultural industries from Korea. And then you also develop and regulate the kind of participation of private capital in cultural industry, and then try to absorb a lot of elements and so a lot of joint collaboration happens in the early days. But as time goes by, Chinese game companies like Tencent and Shanghai and then becomes the major ones, and then they start to like develop the international market and even acquire a lot of major game companies in the world. And, and just like in the past year, there was a, there was another new plans of cultural industry. It's not just talking about the quantity. They want to use it, talk about the quality of cultural industry game industry. And it also wants to increase the cultural consumption to boost GDP, although, although you might hear that, in fact, I'm going to try to crack down some of the like a game that games which unhealthy or portray some like unhealthy values to the kids, something like that. But but the agenda of cultural consumption is still on the plan. I want to because of time I want to actually like shorten it a little bit properly you know that what is what is the regulated that these are the regulating bodies about games so there are lots of like regulating bodies, but starting like started last year, all these are like a regulating body regulating bodies at Consolidate. And then now there's a new unit called NRTA, National Radio and Television Administration. It seems to be real right. It's not television radio, but but in fact is that administration that published or regularly lies on this game industry. So do you imagine that like games in China is still a kind of publication publication means what means ideology. And, and the initial goal of this regulation is, as I mentioned, domestic market, and going out for, like, as a soft power, but I would like like like very in a short time we will say that it changes a little bit, like in this years. And I know that you always talk about like here a lot of controls of games in, in, in China. And that that actually I would say that in my book. This is not a big surprise. In fact, in, in many other countries, even in Japan. I would say, for example, the classification of games, like to prevent like, like kids from addiction. It's quite, quite common. And it happens in many other countries as well. But the most important thing in the regulation of policies in China is about financial support. And they say, for example, they did tax rebate to those like games which like, like export to other countries and give direct subsidies to them. And say they also like have tax incentive for like those game companies say they're located in certain technological power. They actually they give them some kind of like city tax, like like rebate something like that. And there are a lot of other law and public capital support as well. Of course, the most important thing you might want to highlight. I know everybody will ask what is what is the kind of censorship. So I want to like like like skip that and talk about the censorship right now. So censorship is basically a kind of like a kind of measure to strengthen, strengthen the supervision and control of the content. And it's like that. It is like, it's no surprise. In fact, there is a committee in every city in say, in Beijing is composed of like scholars like scholars actually I know myself. And also experts from the film industry, from the other creative industries, and also some government officials, they change it every two years. And they just, they just a kind of committee meeting frequently to judge the games. And then they just pinpoint the kind of main problem of games and ask them to revise before they can publish. So usually they focus more on violence, pornographic and reactionary context. So I, and probably you, you know this game, right? This is a game like I suppose a lot of audiences are youngsters. This kind of better ground games is really common in the past two, three years. This is probably the kind of the version that you have played in a Western context. In fact, it's owned up by 10 cents. So in China, they actually, they, in the past, they would just localize it. Say, you can see they say kind of they are Chinese characters. But nowadays, as the kind of control is getting more and more stringent. My only problem was saying that in fact the early days for this cultural policy is to strengthen the kind of financial capital to promote the game companies and develop it. But nowadays it seems that China has actually put more emphasize on politics on ideological control. In fact, game companies would not survive, but it survived in other ways. So I give you another picture. This is a picture. This is the same kind of battle game that you will see in China. The characters might not be, they still can be a mess, mess, it can be any like nationality, but you can see there's a banner at the back. Basically, they regard this kind of a comeback. It's not a real battle. This is a military training for the people. So in fact, first of all, they are not promoting this kind of violence. They are actually doing some kind of military rehearsal for the countries. And then the banner actually is kind of saying that in fact the training is for the good of the party, for the good of the state. So that's why all the games have to like, I would say synchronize with the state policies to survive. This actually is like actual with my points earlier, like every game companies have to consider both the economic as well as the political constraints. In the early days, they were concerned with more economic constraints. But now it seems that they put more emphasis on these kind of political constraints. You can see, of course, there are also games, like this game, like it's not just kind of causing roles game, but it's also some kind of healthy games promoted by the government say you have to learn from certain models. There's this good model of good political models, and then not to say not to break the rules. This is a kind of games promoted by the government. They also have a strategy games, it's quite common. It's quite a very interesting game, but they use the game to promote anti-corruption. So many of the game companies actually survive by actually also focusing on the political agendas instead of just focusing on the economic agendas. So that's why that recently there have been like some changes in the so called the ecology of game industries in China. Maybe I want to sum up my point. In fact, in the early days, they more or less like the game companies focus more on the market support and the cultural policies more on domestic control and internal protection of the market. They don't want the Korean markets from coming in so much, but nowadays there are more and more political controls like stepping into the game industries. As I actually I talk a lot of Korean examples. So for the next 20 minutes, I will hand over to Shin Dong Kim and then to talk about what the Chinese comparison with the Korean industries, whether this is correct or not. So, Shin Dong, your time. Hey, that is really great. Thank you very much, Anthony. Yeah, it's really interesting to see these examples and the figures are just extraordinary. Always with China, of course. So, participants, please, I can see a couple of questions in the Q&A, but I'd like to see many more. I'm afraid the security setup on our seminars is so tight that for you participants, the only way to get your voice across is to type your question in the Q&A. So, I urge you please to write down your questions for Professor Fung and share them now before you forget, as you undoubtedly will as you are excited to listen to Professor Kim's talk. So, let me introduce without further ado our second speaker, Professor Shin Dong Kim works at the Media School of Ha Lim University in Korea. His research and teaching covers the cultural industries, media culture and East Asian cinema in particular. And he also, which I'm very fascinated about, he also leads the soul-based think tank called Knowledge Co-op for Good Governance. So, Dr Kim's recent publications include the digitalization of K-pop and the globalization of Korean film industry. And he's particularly interested in media co-evolution, this idea which conceptualizes the mutual development of platforms and content in media industries. So, today as Anthony's already noted, Professor Kim is going to talk to us about industry and policy and career. Professor Kim, thank you. Okay, thanks very much Rachel for introduction and also thank Anthony for inviting me to join. Let me share with my slides first. Okay. Well, I may have to skip quite a lot of slides today but basically the topic that I'm going to talk is not much different from what Anthony has been talking about the use of China in terms of developing game industry. And as he correctly pointed out, in China the censorship is one of the interesting questions, you know, using nationalism as a way of developing all kind of different media and also the Chinese government wanted to achieve the national branding impact out of it. But as a matter of fact, the more the contents are based on the nationalistic sentiment, the greater national branding actually decreases in the global community. So, this is a interesting sort of contradiction. But the Chinese government at this point seems to be putting a lot of effort on emphasizing nationalism and their national sentiment. And obviously this is posing a big dilemma in their cultural policy in developing not only the game industry but in developing film industry and then other media sectors. Well, Korea's been the sort of, you know, frontier state in terms of developing online games. China, especially like 20 years ago or even 10 years ago was very active in emulating Korean experiences in developing media industries, including this part. But different from the case of China, I don't think Korea has the contradiction between the content censorship and the industrial policy in developing media industries like game industries. Now, as many of you are aware that the K-pop is making a worldwide awareness and it even increases the awareness on the nation, Korea. You know, so in terms of the nation branding and the public diplomacy, K-pop is making a huge impact and then contributions. You know, for example, many of the universities in European communities now are seeing the increase of Korean language education, FIBA. This is, for example, a case at the University of Copenhagen last year, how the applicants are increasing rapidly in Korean studies program there. And then obviously that's the impact of the Korean culture, Korean pop culture. And we say that in the growth of Korean pop culture, there could be many different factors, micro level and macro level or domestic factors or international factors. But even though there are so many complicated factors working at the same time, somehow, you know, if we are looking at the international media outlets or even in academic discourses, many authors are pointing out the impact of the government policy in developing Korean media industries, even including game industries. For example, here is a man called Martin Role. He is a business consultant and he is having a very successful website of his own company. And then in his analysis on the way Korean pop culture success, like the rise of Korean culture economy and pop culture, he is, for example, pointing out the continuous support from the Korean government. Okay. And he's not the only one pointing out the continuous and relentless support from the from the Korean government. And then it's one of the major factors which is driving the Korean cultural or creative industries to the success. The CNN report, for example, is another one of the many, many, you know, common reports, which is again pointing out the government has also backed the expansion of the country's culture industry abroad, seeing it as a vehicle for sort of power. So, government is coming again and again as one of the major major, you know, important driver of the, for example, here, another website is saying that it began as a deliberate strategy orchestrated by the Korean government. Sorry about that. The PowerPoint is not moving though. Okay. It's not moving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe you have to have the full full screen so that you will move. So now it's just, it stops. Is this still stop at the pop on 18. Oh my God. Thanks for dipping in there. Have a now. Are you seeing the first slide. Yeah, we didn't see the first night. We're on slide 16 and you're not full screen. Okay. Wait a minute. Okay. Have a now. Well, I did the screen that I'm seeing is different from yours. I'm seeing 14. Okay, let me maybe I'll share this screen. Okay. Do you see it. Yeah, yeah. No, you're worse. You're worse. Okay. So. Well, I mentioned that the media outlets like this are constantly and repeatedly emphasizing the role of the Korean government in making the success of Korean culture industries. And it's been cited by like a media like CNN, or other web media, like this, this is a box stop. And they are posting this kind of stories on Instagram, Facebook and auto social media or YouTube. And then the story is, you know, almost like normal. Again, as a deliberate strategy orchestrated by the Korean government. I would say, you know, it's not, you know, the success, the overall success of the culture industries in Korea. It's mainly engineered and driven by the industries themselves, rather than the Korean government's planning and then support. I'm not saying that the Korean state did nothing for the success of the culture industries but to give a give a balance to the ongoing like a misleading discourse. I should emphasize, you know, why the state's role has been perceived as major factors in international media. You know, when they are explaining the success of the Korean, you know, industries, including, you know, the game industries. One of the reason why is that conventional practice of bureaucracy. You know, if you see, if you're visiting like minister of culture of Korean government, you know, they are providing all this data and then explaining what they are doing, you know, it for the success of the Korean industries. It's pretty much like self serving website information so obviously the government official website is providing a lot of information on what they do. Okay. But that doesn't mean that what they wanted to do is always working and then producing the intended consequence. There's also a conventional practice of journalism, and then the journalists, whether it's domestic or international, they tend to rely upon the official source which is again, the self serving website of the government, you know, ministries. So there are amateur educators, if you see the YouTube, many people are talking about their, you know, their own theories and hypothesis on the success of the kpop and then they also depending upon this like pre existing sources so it's like a citation of wrongful in in in a spiral ways, and then it is resulting a like a creation of a kind of fake truth. There's another line of thinking, which is the Korea's unique history of economic development in which the state initiated the export law export oriented development in economic development in the 1960s and 70s. For the foreign observers or scholars is there is a strong temptation to impose this economic development model in a state led economic development model upon the culture industry sectors. But you know, this is very old Korean TV series drama serial drama, which was very, very popular in at the early part of the 21st century. It was broadcasted on the national channel KBS. And then, next year, it was exported to Japanese, you know, an HK, and then, you know, totally unexpectedly, it made a huge success. And it is actually signaling that the beginning of the so called Korean wave in Japan and then in East Asia, huge popularity and opener of the Korean wave in Japan. And it means that in early like 2000, the popularity of K-pop and then Korean wave really swept East Asian communities. And then but Korean government was totally unaware of what was actually going on, you know. And it means that if Korean government planned and then supported and even developed the call so called Korean wave, they must have fully aware, you know, what's going on, but it was not the case. So I would say government was actually following what was already happening in industrial scene up to even these days, like if some of you may have known the parasite, you know, award winning film. And public diplomacy has also been a strong competition for the government side to use the success of the Korean pop culture in using, you know, using the promoting the nation branding. So that's also a part that, you know, painting the sort of wrongful image on the role of the state. But that doesn't mean that the Korean state did nothing. Okay. I mean state do or Korean state especially does things to help the development of culture industries and game industries. For example, the state policy is always there, like on any kind of industry, not only the game industry, but any any kind of industry what. And then the state intervention on any kind of industry comes into two ways, as you know, one is a regulation and the other one is promotion. Okay. So regulation of contents market entry and competition, fair competition ownership control and technological standard, etc. These are all the subjects of government regulation for for helping the development of any industry and promotion for industrial development is also there, not only in game industry, but any, you know, electronic industries or ship buildings or mobile phone productions, you know, whatever you say. And constituting the agency, coca, for example, is by consolidating similar similar promotional agencies in music film broadcasting game animation at a ton of the century, you know, in Korea, we have many different, you know, agencies, which were designed to support to provide, you know, all kinds of support for the development of film music broadcasting game animation, etc. But the Korean government decided to consolidate all these separated agencies, and under one like a grand umbrella institution which is coca, it's Korean like a creative contents agency or something. So, you know, government innovation or government policy on creative and culture industries including game industry comes in two ways, one regulation and the other one promotion. You know, by regulation, the purpose is obviously creating the sound environment for the development sound environment, and then by the promotive promotional intervention. The government wants to encourage funding and investing in game industries and all the industries. We can say intubating and facility offer game Academy for developing human resources, investment cooperation, export promotion, supporting the participation of international markets, supplying information and analysis from game industries. These kind of things are provided by the agencies for the development of game industries. In fact, it started in 1999 from the legalization of an act, you know, so I would say legalization is an important step for government intervention, because government agencies or government minister ministries cannot enact without having like a legal legal background, you know. So in 1999, there was a first legalization of act on record video and game development, which was revised and then expanded to the actual promoting game industry in 2006. So based on these laws, the government involved and then intervened in the development of game industries. And the government also tried to shave the image of game in a positive ways because games as you may know if you visit the online game sites, many of these games are connected to the gamblers. Okay, many of these games are connected to the pornography. So the public image on the game industry at the beginning of the, like a 21st century was pretty much negative, you know, parents are always so much worried about the kids playing, you know, spending time on games, you know. So, the government wanted to turn this negative image on the games to the positive one or at least a neutral one by regulating the practices of gaming the street by like, for example, introducing the rating system based on law, and divided the games into four different level categories, you know, for just like we do for the TV programs or films. And there are other like protecting measures for the miners like a shutdown system or regulating gamblers. And this is all from, you know, from the government support. The Korean government adopted the promotional measures in the in the following ways, for example, the intubating, you know, intubating is in most cases, the most basic and then primary but most important promotional measure, which is providing free business space and facilities for startups for a limited period of time, typically like three years but expandable to six years. So even if you don't have enough to start a money, you can still secure, I mean, some, you know, facilities and space for for your business, you know, and actually there has been many successful game companies which started from this intubating facility to become a global game company. The second way was supporting the production cost directly, you know, they throughout the, you know, like, you know, contest or some kind of selection, the government actually provide the direct support of the production cost. Or the seeding the investment fundraising, the government organize the angel investors and then making a fundraising scheme. And also export promotion using other government arms and training the professional human resource through the privately instituted game academies. And if you type in like a Google in Korea about the game academy, then there are endless number of private private institutions, in which you can get the, you know, free training, you know, free education and training it's not free actually but you don't need to pay. The government pays for the tuition, as long as you participate in the learning program. And then this is under the control of the Ministry of Labor and employment. And research and public education is also important resources for the development of game programs and new games, or the setting up a new plan for for different types of games and supporting the exhibitions and conventions also as a part of the state innovation and state support. So my point, you know, in short, and to summarize that there's been a like almost like a mythological belief that the development of creative culture industries in Korea including game industry is really well planned and then supported by the Korean And I said, which is not true, you know, that's not true. Actually the most important part, the most important actor, which is developing all these cultural and creative industries. Whether it is game or film or TV dramas or you know animation comes from the industries themselves, you know, Korea is pretty much a free market capitalist society. So the limit of the government intervention, even if they got the government wanting to do a lot of things you know is quite limited, quite obviously limited you know Korean economy is quite sizable and then just simply the political system and then market system doesn't give the government them much a dominant initiative room. But that doesn't mean that the Korean government doesn't do anything. They actually do a lot of things by ways of regulation and promotion by regulation they try to create like a fair market competition or they want to promote like a positive images of games and then other creative industries. And then also in the promotional policies, you know, as I summarized, you know, they have applied quite many different micro level policy measures. But not always, you know, they cannot make all the success with all these different policies, you know, there are some successes and also there are some failures. For example, the success factor, you know, the government for the last 20 years have pretty much a continued, you know, continually provided that kind of support, whether it is big or small, you know, the government policy, try to be stable with some necessary budget, you know, but the failure factor, there is a controversy on this issue. Some people are saying that consolidating the promotional institutions on the one big umbrella agency, which is cocaine 2009. Some people say this was a, this was a necessary measure. This is why some other people are criticizing, especially the game industry people are complaints complaining that this consolidation actually weakened the professionalization and responsiveness in, in, you know, in game industry. So, but this is an ongoing, like a controversial issue. My final slide is general evaluation on the role and impact of government policy. The one is in culture industry in Korea is basically runs in market mechanism. It means private industry initiates and the government forms supporting function through regulation and promotion. These supporting function is important as it removes or lessens legal problems, business conflicts and social integrity. The government supports are not the main engine or even a plan. It just supports the way government organizations narrates their policies need serious revision, you know, in my, in my view. You know, because I mean, they, they do this without having any malicious intention, obviously, they simply like provide all these narratives on their website, you know, on what they are doing and then what they want to achieve. So if you read their papers, exhibited exhibited on their websites. It sounds like as if they plan and control everything, which is simply not true. So I, you know, together with my colleagues in Korea. Since last year we started to correct some of this like, you know, misleading documents and websites to be more accurate and proper. Korean state approaches any industry, including game industry following the old and strong pattern of government intervention in markets. But that was built through the years of economic development in the 1960s and 70s. The law of the state in the development era was direct and strong as the government control most of the finance through banks, authoritarian politics in the 1970s and 80s. It also made it possible for the government directly control the private sectors, but since mid 1980s the size of the green economy and level of development in the private sectors began going beyond states capacity of full control. So currently, the private initiative in most areas of industry comes first and the government's role is limited or bit useful as significant and I think this is a some kind of comparable aspect between Korean approach and then Chinese approach in where the government hand is heavier and then stronger. Okay, that's it for my talk today. Thanks for listening. And thank you very much. Ah, that's really fantastic. I'm fascinated to get the two different perspectives in one seminar. Okay, so I can see we have quite a few questions in the Q&A. Quite a lot of them seem to have come from quite a limited number of people who have been fantastically enthusiastic. And that's great. We will attend to your questions, but please everybody else. It would be great to get your questions as well. It would be wonderful to have some more diverse voices in our. So while you get your courage to type in a question, I would like, if I may, to take chairs privilege and ask you to comment on each other. I guess you knew you were going to be in for this, right? I'm really interested in how listening to each other's perspective on China and Korea, respectively, how that makes you think about how you understand your own country's industry. Anthony, if you want to go first. Let me start first. In fact, as I listened to Shin's talk, I also share with Shin and other Koreans call us same feeling. The kind of development of global, so-called global game industries in China. And it's actually spate, like export and internal consumption. It's not about the kind of promotion or the support, not just support from the government. In fact, as Shin also said, in fact, the government actually done a lot of promotion. They play a lot of fair games, things like put up a good framework on how to develop a good text, like framework, so that they know what to do. It kind of, when they promote overseas, they help them and they do a text rebate. But the most important thing for the game industries to develop is about the industry's own effort. It's much bigger than the government policy and the cultural policy. There is also, this is always a kind of misconception that China, like maybe in other industries, it's like maybe in the mobile phone industry, telecom industry, energy industry, like say for example, the 5G industry in other countries, the government actually plays a strong role in helping them, financing them. So the game industries in China, they are always listed in the company. And a lot of actually game companies are listed in Hong Kong in the stock market and also listed in New York's stock market. They finance their own business. They acquire a lot of game companies in the world. And you can see in their annual report. It's nothing about, well, I would say at least I don't see a lot of so-called financial subsidies from the government. But I guess the government has done a good thing in promoting a more clear framework for industry. They say, like for me or for anybody who wants to start a company, they know how to do it and they know what the regulations are. So that's important. For other industries, they think about telecommunication. I think about energy industry. There's no way for private companies to go in. So the cultural policy is not just about monitoring the industry, but also providing a clear framework, which is good. So that's the point I agree with Shin. But there's also differences. Now I would say, I know that a lot of Chinese officials actually went to COCA, then the content industry in Korea. They actually learned it from COCA. Actually, they went there to have some formal talk. I also went to COCA to do a lot of interviews. In the initial stage of development, there are a lot of regulations. Actually, I read all the regulations. They are quite similar. Now, as you can see in Korea, there are very few regulations on content, except the classification of games, like prohibiting teenagers or minors from spending too much time on games. Other than that, the content regulation is totally absent in Korean game industries. So it's actually China, actually started to copy it from other game, other culture industries like in China. They learned it from music, comics as well. And it seems that it becomes a kind of, I would say hurdle for the industry. So in fact, now the industries are not going as potentially as it was in the past. Now, basically, the kind of revenue per toll, simply because they have hard time in producing content that might echo at this stage. So they keep on actually earning a lot of revenues from a lot of previously published games. But for new games to make a lot of profits, it's more difficult. Say, they can only approve very limited of games every year. So there's a kind of difference between so-called the free market in South Korea and the more controlled market in China. Yeah, yeah, I think that's very clear. Thank you. You know, I was wondering how those games that were promoting the anti-corruption campaign would actually go down, you know, would people actually buy them? And I think you're giving a clear answer there, aren't you? But Shin, over to you. What are your reflections on hearing that presentation of the situation in China? Well, I, you know, when three, Professor Feng made it very clear how, you know, in current days, Chinese policy on developing game industries or culture industries is self-contradicting, you know, in between like, you know, government policy with strong tons of nationalism and and also the national branding, you know. On the one hand, China wants to show it off, you know, how China is growing strong in developing like culture industries. Like the recently released film, Zhang Jinghu, is one such case, you know, they invested a huge amount of money and mobilizing top level directors. And in a week, the movie already brought the box office record within domestic market. But obviously the movie is overly nationalistic and, you know, appealing to the domestic audience only, you know, and the reception on the same movie in other nations are quite low or even negative, you know. So on the one hand, mobilizing the nationalism for the development of contents industry is very successful domestically, but it is only inviting a very like a kind of back rash from the global audience. So this is already creating a painful contradiction on the part of Chinese policymakers. And the state driven policies also is with the problems between the political control and then global globalization, you know, the contradiction or the conflict between global standard and then the desire of the nation state, which is stronger, you know, in Chinese situation at the point and then I think Anthony pointed out pretty clear on that. The importance of game industry these days in I mean game industry compared with like a film industry or music industry in Korean context game industry is more, you know, viewed as a very profitable industry, you know, in terms in three aspects. First, the size of the game market as Anthony pointed out is so huge, you know, more than the double of the global film market. And in terms of the technology, you know, like AI technologies or all all the kinds of new technologies are readily applicable in game like industries rather than the other cultural industries. And these days, even music industry, especially like on contact like online concert is adopting more and more new newest technologies, you know, but in game industry, you can actually apply and then try a lot of different like a leading edge in this technology So developing game industry means developing the leading edge, you know, high tech. So in that sense, developing game industry gets a lot of importance. And thirdly, game industry is relatively culture blind. Jang Jin who is a lot more culturally loaded. But in game industry, even in Chinese game, the main character could come in like a blonde and then white skin. Okay, so it could be a lot more cultural blind and then flexible. So in these respects, game industry gets a lot of attention from from both the power and money, you know, so Korean government is also paying relatively higher and then heavier policy attention in developing game industry in comparison with like a film or music Because film and music or TV dramas are going on their own, you know, they do it well, you know, and then there are very, very little room for the government to actually intervene. So there's a, you know, the kind of difference I'd say That's all very interesting. Oh dear. Now you're making me want to ask a bunch of more questions. I won't because it's high time we got to the questions in the Q&A, but really, you know, the mention of culture blind is really making me think about questions of gender now. So maybe I can just drop that in and you can field it within your responses to these specific questions, you know, what's what's the what's the gender breakdown of gamers is how much is that a factor in cultural policy and game design and all of that. But but let us turn to the questions in the Q&A. We have some great questions. Mark Ritchie was was in there first and has actually posed a series of interesting questions mainly about government engagement with the Chinese gaming industry. So first one was how how is reactionary defined in 2021. I was wondering that that's a good one. And perhaps we can put that together with. Oh, yeah, this is an interesting one. Another question about the social credit system. Is that inspired from games? That's a fun one. Perhaps we'll leave leave you with those two, Anthony. Yeah. Yeah, I guess Mark raises a really good point. I actually mentioned that in my book. What is reactionary is something like the Empire game. Like in my in my like my university time it was the kind of civilization game. Now is the kind of military game. The three countries can this different countries come back to come back like it's more like wow. The most controversial reactionary game is again with the world map. So imagine that and then when there's a world map post out that means what a country based another country and maybe some countries like United and Saudi second or third world war. So this is one of the taboo in the Chinese game industry. So they nobody is allowed to check past this night. So if anything is like, like, like, like hints on any kind of national invasion. No matter whether China in this other country or other country in China, it definitely like, like being censored. And so this is, so this is, this is a more like a political game itself is a kind of like trying to desensitize the political sentiment. So the governance doesn't want anything related to it in the game. So that's why if you, you know, like, like, I know a lot of people play a lot of games like World War Warcraft and this kind of games. You might know that those kind of like fighting games in China always end up like well for somebody heard somebody died, but they don't the bloods are not red in color them green in color. So that's why they want to try to play this kind of so called political or a kind of like, like hatred in the games. So this, and of course, this is not, well, like for players, this is not that interesting. For the country to manage the industry. It tries to lay down this kind of implicit as some explicit moves. So like, and then my also asked the question about the social porn and credit system. I don't know what whether it's like, it is being inspired by the game system, but I will say that the social porn system or the kind of like sense tube system in in China is not without. I would say so called consultation the consultation is not like that it's not all it's not a public consultation in UK, asking whether you can, you can do something or not to do something. But China always relies on a group of like academics, experts, like film critics, like a game critics, the deal, a lot of you for union for game gamers, they actually always talk to them about the policy so it is more like, it seems that like for others, like the game controls that should be it's a kind of black box. But for those who are in, in Beijing, who are like in the circle, they keep on talking about that. So in fact, maybe I would say some of the like the kind of control censorship in game is quite similar to to the kind of social porn credit system. This is a result of so called this kind of like public discussion within the small circle. And I was also talking to them as well. So it's not that secret in some sense. Right, that is interesting. Yes. And while we're on the topic, perhaps, of government control and censorship. Could we field. So this is Lena, Morosik's question. Can you see that one, Professor Kim. So this is about discussions around historical accuracy concerning real events in Korean dramas. So she's talking about the drama Snowdrop, which caused a very big controversy. I actually, I actually don't know about that drama, but I know the question and there's been controversies over the historical correctness of any history dramas, you know, and this is obviously not unique to the Korean situation, any any historical drama. I mean, theoretically it's impossible to make a historically correct correct 100% correct history drama, and then drama is not supposed to be a history textbook anyway. So, there always a ongoing like a compromise between fictional creation and then historical truthfulness. Okay. And then I think there is a sort of unspoken compromise going on between the producers and then consumers. So, if you are asking that if there is a any government guidelines or even a committee as he mentioned, you know, which is screening the correctness of the circle fact, I wouldn't say we have, you know, there's nothing like that. So it's just a unspoken unspoken compromise constantly going on between the producers and then consumers. And then if any TV drama or movie is going over a certain sensitive line, then the, you know, then there is a sort of unspoken voice popping up either from the media, you know, journalism, or from the websites from social media, you know, people immediately respond with their own like viewpoints or historical facts, and then challenging. And then, because this is not like a government intervention, this is not the subject to legally decide. There's usually a ongoing debates on public sphere. And then sometimes, you know, producer wins sometimes consumer wins. So I think this is a the nature of the cultural compromise. Usually happening in the consumption process. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, that's very familiar. I probably want to add something on this point. Like in Korea, probably there is no, like, like Korea, a kind of pilot committee, which decides on whether something should be published something should be a theme or something like that. But, but in China, it would be quite quite different. Like game game is a kind of exception, because the game comes out, like after year 2000s, and imagine those have rulers, like, like, like government like, like, like, like civil servants, they actually didn't know about games in the very first place. So, so they didn't actually control games as if they control other content industry like in the streets. Like for other industries like themes, I actually I had a research center, I have a research center in Beijing. Now that because of COVID, I couldn't go there. So when I was there, I always go to a lot of so called private circle, some of the private circle is about film film circle. They actually sit down with the film critic association with some government representative. And they actually they are the people who stands in the game, stands in the film, and they are also directors and I am also the representative of the academics. So so actually they decide what's going on, what would be published, what would be like allowed to be screen on the screen on the on on theater. So, in fact, they want what they want is that in fact they want a thorough discussion when when something is coming out. There's no debate, like, like as she just mentioned, okay, they want to minimize this debate before the film is released. So there's a kind of the philosophy is quite quite different. But but game is a kind of exception because game. There's no no tradition of like controlling game in the first place. So game is like more or less is that they allow more discussion. But but but when there's more discussion later, say for example, there's a very popular game corner corner of King, which was really popular in the past few years, the biggest game in the world. And there was too much controversial, because they actually distort some of the historical life facts. And there was a lot, there was a lot of criticism. So after that, the company actually stopped by a lot because the way I found the kind of release of their new game in the future. So that's why there's some pros and cons about this kind of prior or post control. Yeah, I mean, that's great. And it really leads me to to something I've been wondering in the course of this seminar, which is about, you know, how much your your engagement with the industry your practical experience, how much that informs your your academic study. I mean, of course, it must be a lot. But also, you know, I think this is a bit of a difference between my own disciplinary background, which is more kind of towards anthropology, and perhaps the norms in creative industries studies, which seem to be much more in terms of presentation about the the macro level. You know, whereas as an anthropologist, I'm always really hungry for these kind of specific case studies, you know, what's happening on the ground, how do these specific little cases really help us to understand the wider picture? You know, so I'm really fascinated by your experience of running a company, Anthony, and also with with your your experience of this think tank, she and and how that kind of impacts, but sorry, I'm putting my order in too much here. I want to come back to a couple more questions in the chat. There was quite an early one up there from Jehun Mamadoff. Nice, asking about the influence of other cultures on the Chinese gaming industry. I thought that was quite interesting because she was talking quite a lot about the model of like earlier American approaches to soft power, say, and then we're talking about the Korean impact or the use of Korean models in China. So, yeah, I don't know. Anthony, do you want to respond to that? That's a, well, definitely this is a big thesis on that he or she probably can write a whole thesis on that. I would say, like, imagine, there was no tradition of so called gaming in China. So everything was new in around like year 2000. So think about this kind of game characters. What should they be like? Well, should they look like Chinese? What should they look like Korean? I would say in the very beginning, because a lot of new games in China were adopted from Korea. So they, in fact, a lot of like modeling, they kind of playing strategies more like Korean games. But as time goes by, people try to develop their own character, like in a Chinese setting. And a lot of young kids actually grow up with Japanese animation. On the Japanese animation, actually, a lot of Japanese animation were prohibited in China, but they could get it anyhow on the internet. So in fact, a lot of like characters on game like with yellow color, blue color, green colors are basically Japanese characters. And they can even draw these characters. And even more Japanese than their Japanese. And now, so that's why a lot of game companies also invest in the Japanese animation and film industries. So of course, it's kind of investment second because they can also bring back some of the kind of culture back to China for their own development. So and until right now, you would say that I would say the game industry is largely influenced by mainly by Korean early days and Japanese mainly. So the problem is, now when when China say that now we want our own game, the game should like sell more Chinese culture. So a lot of gamers try to artificially create some sort of Chinese character in the games, and mostly were not too successful. So those who are successful say they may modify from a old character from a historical past, for say from an epic story. But the problem is when when they change the epic story, the kind of old tradition, Chinese tradition and turning into characters, they may distort that character. And then you will involve some kind of criticism from the public and then also create another dynamic. So for, I guess, for them to play say Japanese characters are still or they look like Japanese characters are still the safest way for them to continue to develop the industry. Another channel of transferring the influence between the countries is the actual like working people across the nation borders. For example, I have a friend of mine, a Korean man operating a game company game production company in Zhangzhou, and certain China, you know he he started his business in Beijing first but like almost some 12 years ago 13 years ago. And but the soon after he moved down to Changzhou because Changzhou is a city close to Nanjing, and the way it's Chinese government, you know local government created a industrial complex to host like a game companies from from abroad, including Korea, you know so if you go there. It's like the Korean government's providing startups with facilities and then space at the free or at very low cost. So he could enjoy renting a facility there in Changzhou game industry complex at a very very nominal price. For a long time. So, so when when now he's living in there for like 2012 years and then traveling back and forth between Korea and China. Obviously he has the networks between the two countries, you know, so that this is a actual line, how the influence is being transparent on a daily basis. Yeah, but actually that what you have just said actually created another questions in that like you always hear like an international trade debate. I would say Europe always said, okay, China actually supplies is our key cultural industry, and then they support it to other places. And you can say also actually the United States also subsidize actually support a lot with technological development. So it's like, like, like, like, the yellow bin industry and then actually a sport to China. No, not in the past, we actually we celebrate so called a free market. But now think about this creative industries, maybe except in the early days in Harlem. Now this is no purely free market. Most of the Chinese theme, theme industry actually rely on Korean theme industry because they actually send their themes to Korea for post production. Why because the course is, they actually talk to them and they of course is even less than half, half of the price. Then the local production, simply because the Korean Korean government actually subsidize every post production house when they actually take on other other other company other countries, like post production product. And so that's why even, of course, as a commercial industry like fame companies, they definitely look for a cheaper solution. The same industry, as you said, like there's a lot of this kind of so called Silicon Valley in China actually they subsidize the kind of game development, like say, free, they have free, maybe housing allowance, free free rental whatever and lower tax, like, like, like, from the city. That kind of like benefits could be a kind of so called the subsidies of the industries. No, no, so that's why when the world actually competes, like different countries compete, like on real trade on get like, like these creative industries. Now, it's really, can we see a kind of like really pure market, pure market free market kind of competition. No, no, at the back, somehow, there are some kind of support from the state, and maybe this is something new for the world. Say, they saw powerful many countries are important, although they may not say that. These things always work out in ways that perhaps the governments did not quite anticipate when they formulated their policies. Hey, but gentlemen, it's been a really great experience to have you both kind of firing off each other like this. It's made a very lively Q&A. Thank you so much. But I see that our 90 minutes are well and truly up. And so I think we must draw to a close. Apologies to those questions that we didn't get to. I do encourage you, if I may, to reach out directly to our speakers, their emails, I think, on the website. And if they have a moment in their very busy schedules, I hope they'll get back to you. I can see one question requesting to share the slides. I would say that the whole seminar has been recorded and will be available on the size of China Institute website. So that might be a good way of looking back. So I think it just remains for me to say a huge thank you to our two speakers, Professor Anthony Feng and Professor Shin Dong Kim. I wish you all the best with your research. Thank you for joining us on Zoom and I hope you'll be able to come to London at some point. Yeah, I'll definitely come. I can travel. Thank you, Rachel, for inviting. Thank you, Shin, for joining this kind of discussion. Hope to see you all in person.