Jiangsu Province's cultural sector demonstrated robust resilience and vitality in the first half of the year, with revenue from above-scale cultural enterprises reaching 784.5 billion yuan, a 5.7% year-on-year increase that outpaced the national average by 1.1 percentage points. The data, released by the Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Statistics on September 2, paints a picture of steady industrial fundamentals, active consumption, enhanced services, and innovative business models.

Where the growth is coming from

Breaking down the numbers by sector, Jiangsu's cultural manufacturing, cultural wholesale and retail, and cultural services segments worked in tandem to form a solid industrial foundation. Cultural manufacturing, serving as the industry's bedrock, generated 297.4 billion yuan in revenue in the first half, a modest 0.1% increase. While its growth rate has flattened, this near-300-billion-yuan manufacturing base acts as a stabilizer, helping the province weather market fluctuations and maintain steady progress. The sector has moved away from extensive growth toward a high-precision, internationally competitive, technology-driven development path, with leading enterprises staking their claim at the top of global value chains. Changzhou Lingtong Exhibition, the province's sole enterprise selected for a national cultural and tourism technology innovation research project, now supplies display equipment to 97% of professional venues across China and exports to 156 countries and regions. Meanwhile, Yangzhou-based E Ink Holdings has deepened its focus on electronic paper display technology, commanding over 95% of the global market share, serving as a core partner to numerous prominent international brands, and setting the technical standards and market direction for electronic ink screens worldwide.

Cultural wholesale and retail continued to energize the consumer market, posting 212.9 billion yuan in revenue with an 8.0% increase, making it a key engine driving consumption-side growth. This acceleration reflects the rising momentum of new consumption tracks, including the "guochao" economy, cultural and museum intellectual property, and sports-culture integration. Cross-industry cultural IP collaborations have yielded notable results. In April, Jiangsu Pavilion debuted at the Hong Kong International Licensing Show, helping the province's premium museum resources reach beyond the Yangtze River Delta to a national and global audience. The "Little Pink Stove" refrigerator magnet from the Nanjing Museum sold nearly 400,000 units annually, while the Suzhou Museum has pursued partnerships with over 70 brands, launching close to 1,000 cultural products. The fusion of sports and culture has also spawned fresh consumption scenarios. Since the new "Suchao" football season kicked off in April, the first 11 match weekends attracted over 17 million out-of-town visitors, a 26.1% increase in tourist numbers. The "Follow Suchao to Tour Jiangsu" campaign has become a new gateway for cultural tourism consumption, driving linked growth across travel, retail, and dining sectors.

Cultural services emerged as the fastest-growing segment among the three major sectors, achieving 274.2 billion yuan in revenue, a 10.5% jump. Unlike asset-heavy manufacturing, cultural services leverage talent clusters, creative innovation, and digital technologies to yield high-value-added outcomes, permeating urban renewal, corporate transformation, and daily consumer life. With a continuously improving industrial ecosystem, a growing number of creative studios, digital content firms, and design service companies have established roots in Jiangsu, consistently delivering high-quality creative output and services that drive coordination and iterative upgrades across the industry chain, shifting the sector from scale-based growth to value-centric development.

Why a look at the breakdown matters

By domain, Jiangsu's core cultural sector achieved 375.4 billion yuan in revenue, up 6.8%, while related cultural sectors brought in 409.1 billion yuan, up 4.7%. The notably faster growth in the core sector signals ongoing industrial structure optimization. Across industry categories, several segments delivered standout performances. Creative design services led the pack, generating 109.6 billion yuan in revenue, a remarkable 15.1% increase—the highest among billion-yuan-level segments. Creative design has evolved from a mere "icing on the cake" into a core driver embedded in manufacturing upgrades and urban renewal, using creative leverage to catalyze industrial transformation and city revitalization. Suzhou's century-old First Silk Factory has been redeveloped into a cultural industrial park, nurturing an "AI + design" emerging industry within its historic red-brick buildings while creating new silk consumption scenarios. Nanjing has pushed forward with urban renewal, implementing 338 projects this year, including renovations of 56 neighborhoods and old factory zones, clearing space for creative industries and introducing new business formats. Whether it is hit TV dramas boosting local cultural tourism or creative design exhibitions activating idle industrial spaces, the multiplier effect of creative empowerment continues to expand.

News and information services are accelerating their digital transformation, posting 62.8 billion yuan in revenue, up 14.7%. New media business models are broadening the boundaries of information services, reshaping production, dissemination, and operational models, with diversified, scenario-based, and lightweight information offerings continuing to emerge, establishing a new landscape of full-coverage communication and round-the-clock services. Cultural investment and operations registered the fastest growth among all sub-sectors, with revenue reaching 9.8 billion yuan, a 17.3% surge. This steep upward trajectory reflects strong capital market confidence in Jiangsu's cultural industry, with funds increasingly flowing into digital culture, cultural parks, and content creation. Industrial funds have been steadily deployed—in the first half alone, Nanjing, Wuxi, and Nantong each launched dedicated cultural industry funds of 500 million yuan, providing ample financial support for small and medium-sized cultural enterprises, major cultural projects, and ecosystem improvements.

The deep integration of digital technology with the cultural sector has given rise to a host of new business formats and scenarios, making it the most dynamic growth pole for Jiangsu's cultural industry in the first half. Statistics show that 16 new business-type sub-sectors with pronounced digital characteristics achieved 235.1 billion yuan in revenue, up 13.5%—7.8 percentage points higher than the overall industry growth rate and 3.9 percentage points above the national new-format average. This surge is not a superficial "digital plus culture" layering but a qualitative leap born from cross-disciplinary convergence across technology, culture, tourism, sports, and manufacturing. Cultural industrial parks across the province are aggregating digital culture enterprises, continuously rolling out AI-powered animated series, digital collectibles, virtual performances, and immersive experiences. Wuxi's Hongshan Relics Museum is leveraging AI to bring 2,000-year-old Warring States artifacts to life, enabling digitized relics to "narrate history." Changzhou has launched the province's first comic park, Guoguang 1937, focusing on core AIGC tracks such as AI comics and AI short dramas, building a full-chain ecosystem spanning creative incubation, production, technical testing, and commercial rollout.

At the same time, digital technology has dramatically lowered the barriers to creative production and restructured the industry's value chain. The proliferation of AI-assisted creation, digital modeling, and smart editing tools has spawned numerous independent creative studios, fueling the growth of online literature, digital animation, short video, and livestreaming industry clusters. Nanjing's Online Literature Valley enterprises have deepened their overseas expansion, exporting over 16,000 quality works to international markets. Additionally, the Zijing Award Creative Design Competition continues to unearth local creative talent, facilitating the market-oriented and industrialized transformation of outstanding creative outcomes and injecting fresh momentum into the industry's sustained innovation.

The 784.5 billion yuan in revenue and steady 5.7% growth represent both a solid report card for Jiangsu's cultural industry's resilience and breakthroughs in the first half, and a new starting point as the sector enters a stage of high-quality development. In the second half, with the implementation of the "Jiangsu Provincial Three-Year Action Plan for High-Quality Development of the Digital Cultural Industry (2025–2027)" and the accelerated rollout of the "Thousand Sails Competing" cultivation initiative, along with the continued effectiveness of various industry support policies, the innovation vitality of cultural enterprises, the depth of industrial integration, and the pace of business model upgrades are all poised to further improve. Jiangsu's cultural industry is well-positioned to sustain its path of quality enhancement and innovation-driven growth.