Quantifying the Competitiveness of Cultural Industry and Its Impacts on Chinese Economic Growth

One potential way to promote China’s economic growth is to develop a cultural industry and enhance its competitiveness. To confirm this hypothesis, this study first utilizes the five-element diamond model, principal component analysis, and factor analysis to evaluate the competitiveness of the cultural industry in the 31 Chinese provinces during the period 2013–2019. The results reveal that the competitiveness of cultural industry in the eastern region is the strongest, followed in descending order by the central, northeastern, and western regions of China. Then, the panel regression is employed to explore the impact of the cultural industry’s competitiveness index on economic growth. The results indicate that the cultural industry’s competitiveness is positively associated with China’s economic growth. We also conduct another panel regression analysis by examining the impact of cultural industry factors on China’s economic growth to gain insight into the influence of the cultural industry components on growth. In this analysis, our results indicate that cultural industry factors, including fixed asset investment and labor, significantly play an important role in Chinese growth. This study also finds that total patent applications, the total profit of cultural enterprises, and government expenditure positively impact economic growth, but the evidence is weak. Thus, these three variables could be considered potential future driver factors. The empirical findings offer insights into strategies that the national government could implement to strengthen the cultural industry’s competitiveness as China’s new powerful driver of economic development. Compared with previous empirical studies, this research deepens the competitive cultural analysis, increases the number of observations, and lengthens the period studied.