Development of Chinese Cultural Governance since the Reform and Opening-up

Development of Chinese Cultural Governance since the Reform and Opening-up

Liu Yanwu＊

Contemporary Chinese cultural governance is an important part of the national governance system and the modernization of national governance capacity. It must combine international experience and local method together and run through the whole process of cultural system reform. The good governance of culture is the goal pursued by Chinese cultural governance, which displays the management process of maximizing cultural public interest. In the new era, cultural governance reform has experienced governance subject centralized to pluralism, governance space from inside to outside, governance method from ruling by man to the rule of law, governance path from control-oriented government to service-oriented government. To further improve Chinese cultural governance in the new era, relationships between top-level design and grass-root innovation, cultural democracy and cultural concentration, national cultural interests, social cultural interests and cultural interests of the citizens, domestic cultural governance and global culture must be dialectically dealt with. In the government-market-social governance structure, mutual assistance of multiple missions and win-win of multiple subjects can be achieved, thus promoting harmony of multiple interests.

Cultural governance; modernization of governance capacity; good governance of culture; service-oriented government

Chinese government and Communist Party of China (CPC) have clear understanding and gradually master the law of cultural governance development, and people are aware that some looming progressive changes have occurred in cultural management and cultural regulations due to the establishmentof cultural governance and the influences. This paper attempts to examine the main lines of cultural governance reform in China in recent years from the perspective of subject, space, mode and path, and tries to make a general summary of several relationships that influence cultural governance.

1. The Chinese Characteristics of Cultural Governance

The concept of cultural governance comes into shape accompanied by the project of “National Governance System and Modernization of National Governance Capacity” proposed by the 3rd Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee. As one of the national Five in One governance systems, the modernization of national culture governance capacity is an indispensable topic of this major proposition and it is also an important topic that the cultural field must address. Although the expression“cultural governance” has not appeared in the central government’s documents, the Ministry of Culture and individual government statements have mentioned it.[1]Under the influence of these political context and realities, cultural governance began to attract the attention of mainland academia. However, current articles show that some scholars advocate the concept of cultural governance as a kind of discourse or tool in the research,[2]while others advocate we should use this concept cautiously because it implies the cultural hegemony of power.[3]So, it is necessary to examine the cultural governance concept at the academic level.

According to Yu Keping, the word governance first appeared in 1989 when the World Bank used crisis of governance for the first time to describe the case of Africa.[4]Since then, the statement became a popular term in Western social sciences. With the rise of new public management theories, academics and politicians have given favor to the concept of governance. In the new century, governance has become an important discourse in Chinese academia, from economics to politics, sociology and even the field of culture. In the earlier years, the terms Corporate Governance and Corporate Governance Structure were used to discuss a company’s restructuring and corporate restructuring. Now, government governance, public governance and social governance have become the mantra of political scholars. A review of the CPC’s reports during these years shows that governance appeared three or four times in the Report of the 16th National Congress of the CPC and the Report of the 17th National Congress of the CPC, reflecting statements such as Comprehensive Management of Social Security and Corporate Governance Structure which initially contained the Western concept of Governance. However, this term was mentioned more than ten or twenty times in the Report of the 18th National Congress of the CPC as well as the third and fourth plenary sessions of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee. New academic words such as global governance, government governance, social governance, community governance, grassroots governance and third-party governance have emerged. Governance has the meaning of rule and management, such as the definition of governance of the country, and according toModern Chinese Dictionary, the meaning of governance is similar to treatment and restoration, such as governance of the Yellow River and the Huai River. In these statements, governance is used as a verb, which is different from the Western academic meaning of governance. Governance in Western society refers to the management activities related to national public affairs and management mechanisms in political activities. There are two differences between this and the traditional governance. First, the authority of ruling must be the government,while the authority of governance is not necessarily government agencies. The basis of governance is cooperation between government and citizens. The main ruling body is the government, while the main body of governance can be a government agency, a private institution, as well as cooperation between government agencies and private institutions. The definition of governance is broader than the concept of ruling since ruling is used only for government, while governance can be used in companies, schools and grass-roots communities. Second, the power dimension during the management process is different. Ruling, which is always one-dimensional, can be accomplished by dictating orders, formulating policies and implementing policies from the top down. However, the power dimension of governance is diverse with interactions between the top and the bottom. It mainly manages public affairs through cooperation, consultation, and partnership as well as establishing and identifying a common purpose.[5]

Concerning the introduction of governance to the cultural field, Taiwan was earlier than the mainland. Wang Zhihong and other scholars mainly built their theoretical construction based on Antonio Gramsci’s cultural hegemony, Foucault’s governance concept, and Bennett’s cultural governance theory. They defined cultural governance as by means of culture to realize the regulations and controversies in politics, economics and all social activities. Through a variety of procedures, technologies, organizations, research, discussions and action mechanisms, the academic field defined and adopted the concept of governance. On the other hand, only a handful of the mainland scholars analyzed cultural governance from a rigorous academic point of view. Guo Lingfeng defined it as a network from the public management point of view. Hu Huilin explained cultural governance from the technical or practical level of cultural development and cultural management. Wu Licai discussed three aspects of cultural governance from political, social and economic aspects.[6]In the National Cultural Governance System and Governance Capacity Modernization Seminar held jointly by the National School of Administration and Capital Normal University in 2014, the participating experts believed cultural governance was a kind of soft management compared to the hard management of political governance and social governance. Therefore, in the national governance system and the modernization of governance capacity, we should direct the national cultural governance into the rule of market, the rule of law and the rule of humanity.[7]Some of these definitions favor the Western theory of governance, while others focus on cultural management practices or an integrated approach. This paper presents the concept that the national cultural governance theory is a general provision and summary of the state or political party regarding the cultural governance mode, structure, function and character. To study the cultural governance of our country in the new period, we must put national cultural governance under the realistic national strategic layouts of Five In One and Four Comprehensives and in the framework of the national governance system and the modernization of governance capacity. Cultural governance must be rooted in the concrete practices of the Socialist cultural development with Chinese Characteristics. Only in this way can the tree of cultural governance grow and flourish.

First, contemporary Chinese cultural governance must be an organic combination of international experience and our local method. The kind of governance system a country chooses is determined by its historical heritage, cultural traditions and level of economic development. Contemporary Chinese cultural governance is the result of a long-term cultural heritage, progressive development and an endogenous deepening. Since cultural development is not isolated, open and inclusive characteristicsare the reasons for the long-lasting Chinese culture. However, the exchange, intermingle and battle of cultural exchange have never stopped. Absorbing and referring to outstanding achievements is the main tune of cultural opening-up. Regarding foreign cultures, we must adopt what is positive and abandon what is negative according to the reality of our country. In criticizing or abandoning the negative things, we must introduce and absorb reasonable achievements. Comrade Deng Xiaoping said, “We must use Marxism to analyze, identify and criticize their ideological content and expression methods.”[8]Western governance theory emphasizes pluralism, legalization, democratization and consultation, as well as progress in governance. We must learn from these experiences by adhering to the specific conditions of China and combine them with our cultural experiences accumulated during the revolution, construction, and the reform and opening-up. It must be in line with the centralized guiding ideology and the directions of advanced cultures. If the cultural development deviated from the Marxist guidance and the development path of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics, even if the culture is prosperous, it is also a failure in cultural governance. It is because there are clear management boundaries among western governments, markets, and enterprises. Our public cultural business is not complete public goods; it also bears the responsibility of national cultural security and ideological security.

Second, cultural governance runs through the whole process of cultural system reform. The history of China’s reform and opening-up over the past 30 years is the whole history of economic, political, cultural and social life. With the gradual deepening of economic reform, political system reform, cultural system reform, education system reform, medical system reform, science and technology system reform must be carried out gradually. Concerning the changes from the double track system theory of the art groups to the restructuring of state-owned cultural units, the division of the institutional industry to the cultural cross-border integration development, cultural system reform is largely cultural governance reform. Since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee, our party and government have always emphasized the reform of the cultural system. The reform of the cultural system has always been a crucial scene and major narrative in the country’s political life. The political report of the CPC Central Committee and report of the government work of the National People’s Congress contained the complete contents of the cultural system reform. Also, the Sixth Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee held thematic studies of cultural development and passed the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Cultural System Reform to Promote Socialist Cultural Development and Prosperity. Cultural governance must be integrated into the Five in One overall arrangement of economic, political, cultural, social and ecological construction of the Party and the government. It must be integrated into the overall arrangement of various institutional reforms and planned as the driving force of cultural development.

Third, good governance of culture is the goal of cultural governance. Governance is proposed as a complement to government failure and market failure. However, neither can it replace the government and the market or become omnipotent due to the possibility of government failures. Therefore, the pursuit of good governance has become the common goal of governments throughout the world. Then, good governance of culture should also be the value of cultural governance. The process of good governance of culture is the management progress to achieve the maximum public culturalinterest, including the following aspects. First, the direction of socialist culture shall be clear. Second, strict laws are needed to govern the cultures. Third, we must provide of high quality cultural services with low cost of governance and high administrative efficiency. Fourth, we must achieve a high degree of social participation. We need to fully release the cultural creativity of people by focusing on people and their work, thus entertaining people through actual benefits and achieving pleasure in the process of entertaining people. How to achieve good governance of culture? We can achieve good governance of culture by diversification of cultural governance, standardization of cultural management modes, classification of cultural management objectives, and develop compatible cultural management concepts and systematizations of cultural governance mechanisms.[9]

Finally, cultural governance is considered at the technical level. Governance involves governance methods such as mechanisms, procedures and strategies that can be used for all. The government has the responsibility to adopt these new methods and techniques to control and guide the public culture in a better way. We can consider the cultural governance as a process rather than a series of stiff policies and regulations. Cultural governance needs to attract social forces as participants to change the single mode of the past, which only included government cultural institutions. The partici pation method of cultural governance shall be open and transparent. The strategies of cultural governance shall be made by democratic negotiations and be a continuous interaction rather than impositions. The method of cultural governance is no longer a single administrative order, but can be managed through economic and legal means such as market incentive mechanisms, tax and financial subsidies as well as regulatory controls.

To sum up, we have defined China’s cultural governance for the new era. It is a significant component of the modernization of the state governance system and governance capacity. It is a new mechanism for the government to develop cultures and build a country with a powerful culture by attracting more participants and implementing new methods, including cultural governance structures, functions and their interrelationships.

2. The Main Route of the Development of Cultural Governance

Looking at the track of cultural governance reforms in the new era, we can create a clear map. The governance subject changes from one to multiple participants. The governance space changes from the inside to the outside. The governance method changes from rule by man to rule by law. The governance path changes from control-oriented government to service-oriented government.

First, the governance subject changes from one to multiple participants. According to Yu Keping’s analysis, after 30 years of reform and opening-up, China’s political system reform gradually changes from the unified governance pattern with unclear clarification of the party, government and enterprises, in which the party can represent the government while government can represent enterprise, to the multiple governance pattern, which takes party organizations, governments and various enterprises at all levels as the subjects. The party and the government are the most indispensable governance subjects. The party is mainly responsible for the political leadership, while the government is mainly responsible for the administrative management.[10]Correspondingly, China’s cultural system reform in the new era has also experienced a change from single governance to pluralistic governance. The party committee, government, society, market and individuals all participate in cultural governance.From the perspective of governance practice, the cultural system before the reform and opening-up was based on the cultural system of the liberated areas in the new-democratic revolutionary period, mainly referring to the Soviet model. It was a unified system in line with the socialist planned economic system at that time. One of the main features of the development of China’s culture during this period was the subject of the simplification of governance. The economic base determines the superstructure, so the superstructure must adapt to it. With the gradual establishment of the socialist market economic system in our country, the cultural system must be coordinated with the economic system reform. In the 1980s, the cultural market position was formally accepted and the cultural units began to implement the reform focusing on a contract responsibility system as the main content to resolve institutional drawbacks such as over management and eating from the same pot - getting an equal share regardless of the performance. At the same time, many reform measures were implemented such as helping cultural development by other articles and multiple industries. The 1990s witnessed the formation of development patterns in which the state guaranteed the focus and social cultural undertakings were encouraged. Social forces were gradually incorporated into the cultural management system. In the new century, social forces can participate in public cultural services by setting up entities, sponsoring projects and activities as well as providing facilities to improve the socialization of cultural services. At the same time, cultural volunteers become the new force in grassroots cultural construction and mass cultural activities. Today, the cultural elements of our country have gradually established a cultural management system which is run by the party and government, managed by self-discipline, supervised by society and operated by enterprises and institutions according to law. From the perspective of governance theory, the subject of governance changes from one to multiple participants, which can be supported by meta-governance theory and the theory of coordination governance.

Metagovernance is regarded as the governance of governance. The theory was first put forward by the famous British political theorist Bob Jessop. Metagovernance is a revision of governance theory, aiming to carry out a macro arrangement of governance forms such as the market, state, and civil society and reorganize the governance mechanism. Metagovernance emphasizes the important role of the government in social governance. According to Jessop, “Although the governance mechanism may have specific technical, economic, political and ideological functions, the government must retain its right to open, close, adjust and establish separate institutions of governance.”[11]In order to realize the goal of building a socialist cultural power, it is the key to ensure the cultural interests of all parties by establishing a governance structure of One Core with Pluralistic Dimension of the socialist culture with Chinese characteristics. One core refers to the CPC as the core leadership to ensure the direction of the advanced culture. In the changes of governance subject from one to multiple sides, the leadership is maintained. Pluralistic Dimension means the government is the dominant force, the state-owned cultural enterprises and institutions are the key to rely on, private cultural enterprises are important support, social organizations are the driving force and the people are the solid foundation. This governance subject structure is in line with metagovernance theory. Under the leadership of the Party and the government, we can achieve cogovernance of the subjects, effectively promoting cultural development and prosperity.

Collaborative governance refers to the process of cooperative management of social affairs and all the methods used during this process by government,economic organizations, social organizations and the public within a specific scope. The goal of the governance is to maintain and enhance the public interest through extensive participation, equal consultation, cooperation and joint actions led by the government that takes the existing laws and regulations as the common norms. Collaborative governance theory emerged in the early 1990s, and has now become the choice of many governments to carry out reforms of the government. From a global perspective, collaborative governance is the product of the poor performance of government governance, the growth of civil society, the growing awareness of democracy and the strengthening ability of citizens.[12]In China, with the economic and social development, grassroots democratic reform enhances people’s awareness of democratic participation and protecting rights and interests. Private cultural enterprises, social organizations and individual citizens provide more requirements for the rights of participation, expression and supervision during the allocation of cultural resources. The modernization of cultural governance is in urgent need to change from the traditional one-way model to the interactive governance model with interactions. Only through co-governance such as extensive participation, equal consultation, co-operation and joint actions, can the pluralistic parties in the main structure of cultural governance achieve maximum cultural interests.

Second, governance space changes from the inside to the outside. With the profound changes in governance behaviors and methods, the spatial framework of cultural governance has gradually changed from the inner system to the outside of the system, and the scope of governance has also grown, which can be manifested in four levels. First, the change is from governance of the grassroots to the whole country. The cultural system reform initiated in 2003 called for the transformation of the government departments from holding cultural activities to managing culture and enlarging the management area from the grassroots to the whole country, further improving the relationships between government and the cultural and business units under the government and enterprise separation principle, so that the non-public economy can compete at the same stage. As a crucial part of the socialist cultural economy, the private cultural economy has risen rapidly. Some provincial and municipal private cultural enterprises account for more than half of the total cultural and economic resources, forming a common pattern of public ownership as the mainstay and multiple ownerships developing together. Second, the change is from the inner cooperation to cross-border integration. Under the mechanism of cultural operation in the past, many cultural affairs became autistic cultures, which are far from public life, and cultural activities and consumption mainly circulated within the cultural system.[13]In recent years, in the re-construction process of state-market-society relationships, these drawbacks are being eliminated.Advice on Government's Purchase of Public Cultural Services from Social Forceswas issued by the central government, which can help handle the relationships between government, market and society correctly and bring the supply of products and services from the internal cycle of the culture to the big circle of the market, thus promoting the social development of public cultural services and gradually establishing socialism market economy to adapt to the public cultural service supply mechanism. With the invisible hand of market competition, it can enhance the quality of public cultural services and efficiency. the integrated development concept of culture + was fostered to promote the development of integration with relevant industries, thus providing better service to the economic restructuring, industrial transformation and upgrading, and serving the growing material and cultural needs of the people.Third, looking from the vertical axis, the autonomy and governance ability of cultural governance at the three levels of the central-local-grassroots hierarchy are continuously improved. In the new round of reform since the 18th Congress Committee, the central government has increased the top-level design of the reforms and the local governments have become the key and central variables of the reforms. Local governments are the messenger and the executive of the central policies, and the sensor of grassroots demand. The local government has become a double agent of the central government and the grassroots society. The bold exploration of grassroots governance has activated its autonomy, initiative and action. National cultural governance obtains the expansion of existing institutional space and releases the institutional efficiency to maximum without interfering the fundamental political system framework. Therefore, governance performance from the central to the local governments has improved in all aspects and there is the possibility of transformation and breakthrough for institutional space.[14]Fourth, looking from the horizontal axis, our country implemented the going out cultural strategy, actively participated in global cultural governance, adhered to seeking common ground, protected cultural diversity, and told the Chinese story. It took the initiative to participate in the world cultural competition and development pattern and enhance the national cultural soft power through various forms such as the Confucius Institute, the Silk Road cultural industry belt, and the Chinese culture year.

Third, governance method changes from the rule by man to the rule of law. Since Chinese feudal society has a long history, the concept of the rule by man is deeply rooted in the culture. The process of reform and opening-up is also a process of transforming from the rule by man to the rule of law. It is also a process of gradually establishing the socialist legal system of China. The political report of the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward for the first time the goal of establishing a socialist country ruled by law. After the 16th Congress Committee, the Chinese government has clearly put forward the requirements of building a government under the rule of law. Governing the country according to law has become the basic plan for the Party to lead the people to govern the country in accordance with the law. Governing according to law is the basic way of governing the country by the Party. The concept of administration according to law is increasingly clear in the minds of the Party and government organs and the people. In 2010, based on China’s national conditions and reality, the legal system of socialism with Chinese characteristics was established in order to adapt to the needs of reform and opening-up and socialist modernization. It is the embodiment of the Party and the people’s will and takes the Constitution as commander. The legal system mainly consists of multi-level laws such as laws, administrative regulations and local laws and regulations. All aspects of national economic construction, political construction, cultural construction, social construction and ecological civilization construction can be managed according to the law.[15]To be specific in the cultural field, management means that relying solely on the redhead documents and administrative means in the past gradually change to a variety of management styles combining administrative, legal, and economic means. Of course, the cultural law is different from legislation in the economic, political and social fields, and its ideological characteristic is strong. Many problems are very sensitive in this field. We not only need to deal with the relationships between development and management, but also consider the relationships between domestic management regulations and international practice.Compared with the modernization goal of promoting the cultural management system and cultural management ability, the cultural rule of law still has many incongruent and noncompliant problems. The number of legislation is small and the level of legislation is low. The quality of legislation needs to be improved.[16]At present, it is necessary to speed up the output of the legal systems, to enactthe Law on the Protection of Public Cultural Services,the Law on the Promotion of Cultural Industry, andthe Law on National Medals and the National Honorary Titles, thus strengthening the legislation in the field of the Internet and enhancing the stability, standardization and coercion of cultural governance.

Fourth, the governance path changes from control-oriented government to service-oriented government. Since the reform and opening-up, the general trend of the reform of the Chinese government management system is that the composition of control is decreasing and the proportion of services is increasing. In 1998,the Institutional Reform Program of the State Councilestablished public service as the basic function of the government for the first time. The government work report of 2005 formally recognized building a service-oriented government as the government’s goal.[17]Yu Keping pointed out that the service-oriented government includes five aspects. The government should pay more attention to the government service responsibility and construct a responsible government. The government should increase the public service expenditure and provide more social public goods. The government should promote various policies of public service to provide guarantees for the service-oriented government. The government should improve the quality of government services and the level of public services. The government should spare no efforts to achieve equalization of basic public services. In order to implement these actions in the cultural field, the government has responsibilities to protect the basic interest, strengthen the weak point, and keep the bottom line. The government should protect basic cultural rights and interests of the people, such as the rights to watch television, listen to the radio, read newspapers, participate in public cultural appreciation, and public cultural activities. In areas such as the central and western regions, rural areas, remote mountainous areas, old revolutionary base areas and ethnic groups areas, the cultural infrastructure is backward and cultural resources are weak. This is the weak point of the construction of a cultural well-off society. The government should increase cultural investments and co-ordinate the regional, urban and rural developments between the different groups. The government should protect the basic interests of migrant workers, left-behind children and women, urban poor households and other vulnerable groups to enjoy cultural subsistence allowances, which is also the government’s basic responsibility. Second, the government should increase cultural supply capacity and change the single plan means in the past to play an active role of market in the allocation of cultural resources and the leading role of the government. The government should encourage and guide the social forces to provide public cultural goods and services through the methods such as government’s purchase of services, project subsidies, and awards. Third, the government should raise the level of cultural supply, strengthen the construction of public cultural service facilities such as cultural centers, museums, libraries, art museums, science and technology museums, memorial halls, workers’ cultural palaces and children’s palaces and patriotic education demonstration bases, all being open to society free of charge. Fourth, the government should improve the cultural supply method and adopt different methods according to local conditions to improve service quality. As people’s cultural consumption patterns change, the government should increase culturalservices networks, mobile digital ways to facilitate people in a timely and quick access. In addition, the government should provide the publication of a negative list of government power to cancel and adjust the administrative examination and approval matters, simplify the administrative examination and approval procedures and implement a one-stop office to shorten the examination and approval time, reduce administrative costs, thus building a highly efficient, clean and transparent government. These are significant changes in the cultural governance path.

3. Several Relations Should Be Handled in Improving Cultural Governance

The Chinese cultural governance develops and evolves with both harvest and shortcomings. However, the realization of good cultural governance to maximize the cultural interests is the goal of the government, society and the market. In order to further improve the governance of Chinese culture in the new era, we must properly handle the following relations from the perspective of dialectics.

First, we should handle the relationships between top-level designs and grassroots innovations. Under the framework of the current political system, China’s cultural governance has taken the management method with one model, which provides the same requirements for upper and lower institutions. The central and local are separated, which makes the responsibilities lay on the local governments.[18]If the local governments’ research on the top design of the central government is not enough without thorough pondering and innovation, it is inevitably difficult for cultural development. Therefore, we must give full play to the two central and local initiatives to promote top-level design and grassroots exploration of positive interactions and organic combinations. For these overall and crucial problems, which restrict the reform and development of China’s cultural development in the future, we must carry out top-level design and focus on the design of the system, integrity and synergy. Under the guidance of coordination principle between power and property rights, we should clarify the scope of cultural affairs between the central and local governments at all levels, and divide the responsibilities of governments at different levels.[19]In fact, to strengthen the top-level design and encourage grass roots innovation are not contradictory. We can achieve these two goals to complement each other and promote each other. Historically, grassroots innovation has been rich in national governance experience and promotes the national level of institutional change from the bottom up.[20]First is to solve the lack of motivation and courage of the grassroots exploration, to encourage local, grassroots, and the masses to emancipate the mind and actively explore the methods. For example, in the process of exploring the equalization of public cultural services, different regions are encouraged to carry out local pilot projects. The second method is to actively provide legal authorization, institutional support and political protection for grassroots innovation and tolerate the error in grassroots exploration. Third, due to the differences in the level of governance structure in different regions, wecannot force the national synchronization of cultural governance, nor can we force the synchronization of the central and local governments. We need to correctly handle the top-level design and grassroots innovation as well as the consistency of diversity and stick to the bottom line to form the largest common divisor and draw the largest concentric circles.

Second, we should handle the relationship between cultural democracy and cultural concentration. Due to lack of diversification of governance in traditional cultural management, the rule of law, democratization and negotiation, process and other elements, cultural concentration is more while the cultural democracy is less. Culture indoctrination is more while the cultural consultation is less. The typical case is the unreasonable supply and demand structure of the community bookrooms and rural bookrooms. Therefore, it is necessary to take culture and people’s livelihood and cultural projects as a breakthrough point to further broaden the channels for citizens to participate in cultural governance and improve the platform of pluralistic participation in cultural governance. We need to establish a public cultural decision-making public opinion survey, social consultation, expert argument and public hearing system. In modern society with developed information, people have more convenient ways to participate in democracy such as WeChat and microblogs. Major public cultural decision-making should listen to expert opinions and respect national-owned private cultural enterprises, social organizations and cultural volunteers. Meanwhile we should pay attention to the views of the silent majority and not allow a few people to manipulate public opinion through the media and the Internet.[21]China’s cultural governance should adhere to the basis of democracy and concentrate and strive to build an active cultural governance with centralized and democratic characteristics as well as discipline and freedom. Literature and art need the people, while the people need literature and art. We need to carry forward cultural democracy and respect the people’s various choices. At the same time, we must combine the feelings, thoughts and wills of the masses, guide them by value and spirit, and enhance them in line with the cultural development and cultural development strategy. For example, the square dance is a kind of cultural self-conscious activity of the people. It is a typical case of cultural democracy and cultural unity. The government should enhance the level of activities through cultural volunteer counseling and a variety of competition incentives. The government can reduce the negative effect of noise nuisance to achieve harmony with the surrounding residents by enactingEnvironment Law. The square dance has become an important part of the cultural landscape in Chinese urban and rural areas in the new era.

Third, we should handle the relationships between national cultural interests, social and cultural interests as well as the interests of civic culture. To improve cultural governance, we should properly handle the relations among the three aspects, clearly define the basic categories of national cultural interests, social and cultural interests and the interests of civic culture as well as realize the equal status of these interests and protect the multibenefit win-win situation. From the international point of view, national cultural interests mainly protect cultural diversity, enhance the national cultural soft power and maintain the discourse power in international cultural development and competition. From the domestic point of view, the national cultural interests are the country’s spiritual strength provided by the government cultural sector through the development of public power culture, heritage culture, the protection of cultural rights and interests of citizens. The government should coordinate the realization of the national cultural interests with the protection of the basic culturalrights and interests of the citizens and detach itself from the market. It will neither compete with the people nor undermine the rules of the game, but safeguard the market rules. We cannot determine the national cultural interests due to the interests of the individual’s nor harm the individual rights due to the construction of the cultural interests of the country, which are based on the protection of the basic cultural rights of citizens. Social and cultural interests are the main players in the market, and the cultural interests of all parties involved in cultural governance. Due to the particularity of the cultural economy, Chinese cultural governance emphasizes the positive role of the market in the allocation of cultural resources rather than the role of decision. Meanwhile we do not deny or neglect the role of the government. we need to regulate the monopoly of the government and withdraw from the areas where the mechanism can influence. we need to control the failure of market competition and strengthen the government’s ability to provide macro-control and public cultural services to promote social information transparency. This way we can make other social forces understand each other’s interests through the full exchange of information, so as to achieve a common goal of governance and avoid conflicts of interests at all levels of society and damage to governance cooperation. The personal cultural interests of citizens are the logical starting point of state behavior. Although the cultural rights of contemporary Chinese citizens are deeply rooted in people’s minds, people’s awareness of cultural rights and interests has begun to flourish, the institutional mechanism to protect the cultural rights of citizens has not yet been thoroughly implemented. The right of cultural relief has become an important part for citizens’ cultural security, the protection of rights, and is the legal relief and assistance after the infringement of citizens’ cultural rights and interests. The ancients said, “If everyone had the rights, the country will flourish. If everyone had no rights, the country will be destroyed. This power is like natural changes in the world which can not be changed either in the past or in the present.”[22]In short, by multiple-governance, the win-win situation can be achieved by cooperation of the government’s governance, the self-governance of the market and the mutual governance of social organizations.[23]

Fourth, we should handle the relationship between domestic cultural governance and global cultural governance. Some experts believe that the national governance system and national governance capacity modernization need to be discussed from both the international and domestic dimensions.[24]Domestic cultural governance is the basis of the global cultural governance. The national cultural soft power can increase its leadership role in the international cultural pattern. In turn, more international voice can promote the modernization level of domestic cultural management. In recent years, the Paris Climate Conference, the Asia Investment Bank, and the Belt and Road Initiative are China’s active participation in global governance. On one hand, China should take the initiative to strive for the right to speak in international cultural organizations to increase the voice of China. On the other hand, China should advocate the establishment of a worldwide multi-party cultural institution with China as its mainstay. By these pipelines and practical projects, we can participate in global cultural governance and tell the story of China, thereby shaping the image of the responsible power of China. In times of hardship, one should treasure him at first; in times of success, he is expected to benefit others. Taking into account both domestic and international cultural governance, we need to achieve multi-mission interactions, pursue win-win situations and promote harmony of diverse interests.

(Translator:Ding Xiaohua; Editor: Yan Yuting)

This paper has been translated and reprinted with the permission ofForum on Chinese Culture,No.7, 2016.

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*Liu Yanwu, Professor, Sichuan Provincial Party School．

*Foundation item： The result of Development of Chinese Culture Governance Since Reform and Opening-up, the General project of Sichuan Provincial Party School（Project number： SCJD2016YB02）．