The development of cultural industry has brought high expectations for a fast and sustainable development direction for many countries, including Vietnam.
A performance of Bong Sen Music and Dance Troupe
However, cultural industry products from abroad have been somewhat overwhelming the domestic cultural market. This fact posed a requirement to increase attractiveness of cultural industry’s products in Vietnam, creating products with high added value and competitive advantages.
In many countries, cultural industry has become a spearhead economic sector, making significant contributions to their GDP as well as the formation and promotion of their image. In Asia, the Republic of Kore (RoK) has been successful in developing cultural industry with the Hallyu wave (the global popularity and increase of RoK culture) that has contributed to the country’s economy. Similarly, the annual revenue of Japanese cultural industry accounted about 7 percent of the economy's total revenue and attracted 5 percent of national workforce. In Europe, cultural industry contributed around 3 percent of GDP per year and created jobs for about six million people.
Vietnam’s cultural industry has been making efforts to narrow the competition gap with other cultural industries in the world. Disseminating and implementing the Vietnam Cultural Strategy until 2030, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Nguyen Van Hung emphasised that the development of cultural industries aims to promote the soft strength of Vietnamese culture, striving towards a 7 percent contribution to GDP by 2030.
With approximately 100 million people, Vietnam is a potential market for cultural industry. However, many products of Vietnam are not unique and has not high applicability, so they have not created attractiveness for Vietnamese people. This has also partly explained why although the revenue from movies, tourism and fashion industries has improved, the domestic cultural market continues to be dominated by imported products. Meanwhile, in recent years, people's incomes have been constantly increasing, so their demand for cultural enjoyment has become more diversified. This is not only an opportunity but also a challenge that requires an increase of attractiveness and diversification of domestic cultural industry’s products to satisfy the needs of cultural enjoyment and consumption of people from all strata. Thereby, domestic consumption by ‘Make in Vietnam’ innovative industrial products will be stimulated.
To do this, the relevant agencies should properly assess the potential of the cultural industry and consider it as a key sector to make a breakthrough in guidelines, policies and legal corridor as well as clearly define the roles and responsibilities of functional sectors in their implementation. In addition, it is crucial to have a mechanism for financial investment, capital attraction, and the formation of an environment for cultural creativity while making creativity into a core element in creating cultural industry products with high applicability and competitiveness. The investment in the development of scientific and technological infrastructure should be boosted towards creating a connection between tradition and modernity in cultural industry. In particular, managers should focus on the strategy of training human resources and promoting personal imprints in the products.
Minh Anh
Translated by NDO