China's New Cultural Entrepreneurs and Creative Industries, 2000–2022: Guest Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

This Special Issue aims to open new windows on cultural entrepreneurship in China's new media and creative industries from circa 2000 to 2022. It presents four studies on Chinese cultural entrepreneurship in literary production, visual arts, social media, and cinema. These studies analyse from various angles the rise of cultural entrepreneurship – straddling commerce and culture – in China's official and vernacular cultures, including the role of gender and the rise of women cultural entrepreneurs in China's new mediasphere, within an adverse socio-political environment. Analysis of voices, themes, and a network of negotiations and exchanges in literary texts, visual artworks, movies, social media, and the socio-cultural and political discourses in China's mediasphere sheds new light on self-fashioning in transmedia narratives, the new cultural dynamics of the digital age, and the tensions between China's vernacular cultures – which thrive in digital spaces and non-official communities – and the officially ordained culture of the party-state.