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ABSTRACT
We document major changes in museum supply in China between 1996 and 2015. These years have seen the opening of many small, low budget and locally managed museums; an increase in the average size and expenditure of all museums; and significant investments in a few large and centrally managed superstar museums. Chinese people have access to larger and better museums and pay lower admission fees. Regional inequalities in museum growth are smaller than inequalities in GDP growth. We relate these findings with the small literature on Chinese museums and specifically the notions of soft power and cultural nationalism.
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Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. In 2017, the Ministry of Culture and the National Tourism Administration merged to become the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. We use the acronym MCT to refer to both the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Cultural Tourism.
2. According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the country’s administrative units are based on a three-tier system: provinces (31), municipal a.k.a. prefectures (331) and county (2851). http://english.gov.cn/archive/china_abc/2014/08/27/content_281474983873401.htm .
3. Some branches of government also manage dedicated museums. For example, the Chinese Central Military Commission administers the Chinese Aviation Museum and the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution (Bollo and Zhang Citation2017).
5. The free-admission policy was also mentioned in the 11th and 12th five-year plans mentioned above.
7. According to Frey and Meier (Citation2006), museum variable costs are a function of quality and visits. Visits influence cost through longer opening hours and higher staff budget but this represents a small fraction of total expenditure.
8. MCT releases each year statistics on cultural development but some measures are not available throughout our sample period. We selected here ‘cultural undertaking expense’ which includes public library, performance art and cultural centres. In 2015, it amounted to 68 billion RMB. A broader measure which includes culture, sports and media brings the figure to 306 billion RMB. Museum expenses alone amounted to 18 billion RMB and ‘cultural heritage expense’ to 28 billion RMB. See notes 17, 19, 20 in the Statistical Communiqué of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Citation2017) and http://www.gov.cn/guoqing/fujian/qgwhfzhtjgb.pdf.
9. Information retrieved from Eurostat’s website https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Government_expenditure_on_recreation,_culture_and_religion#Expenditure_on_.27recreation.2C_culture_and_religion.27 .
10. We cannot quantify the two effects because we do not observe individual museum size.
11. The same holds for GDP elasticities. Over the entire period, the GDP elasticity of size was about one. But a 1% GDP increase was associated with a .54% increase in museum size up to 2008 and to 2.1% after. A 1% increase in GDP was accompanied by a 1.7% increase in museum expenditure up to 2008 and to a 2.7% increase afterwards.
12. Interestingly, total ticket revenue remained constant and this is because the number of tickets sold increased throughout the sample period.
13. Bennett derives two hypotheses from the political rationality premise: (a) open and equal access and (b) equal representation of all groups of society within the museum. The creation of ecomuseums (Lu and Dan Citation2013), for example, is an illustration of the second hypothesis. We do not discuss this second hypothesis further as doing so would require information about museum content that is not available in CSYCC.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Fenghua Zhang
Fenghua Zhang is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Cultural Development at Wuhan University. She specializes in economic development and cultural economics with a particular focus on China. Her recent work focuses on cultural consumption, cultural policy and museum supply in China.
Pascal Courty
Pascal Courty is a Professor of Economics at the University of Victoria. He is an applied economist who has contributed to the fields of cultural economics and sports economics. His work has been published in leading economic journals.