Making a Creative City with Chinese Characteristics: Perspectives from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei

The global appeal of culture-led urban development is commonly attributed to the increased inter-city competition for foreign investment, talents and tourists. But this reason alone is insufficient in explaining the ‘cultural turn’ in East Asian cities, which do not fit into the framework of the post-industrial ‘entrepreneurial’ city. Urban cultural policies and the meanings attached to them transform as they move from one site to another, and it is therefore imperative to consider the historical, cultural and political specificities and complexities that shape and define them. This research aims to explore the context and continuous transformation of the creative city policy discourse in three Chinese cities. Specifically, it examines the understandings that urban policymakers attach to the ‘display’ (Williams, 1984) role of the creative city in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei, interrogating the reasons behind the adoption of ‘imported’ templates of large-scale cultural events and the decision to promote cities as creative. Drawing on thematic analysis of policy documents and semi-structured elite interviews, this study found that in all three cities, policies have been adopted primarily as a political rather than as an entrepreneurial strategy. The findings reveal mutation as a two-way process: the ‘imported’ cultural policies not only are transformed by the city, but they also transform the city’s approach to culture and the arts, which has both positive and negative implications. This research contributes to the developing field of policy mobility and the understanding of urban cultural policy in Chinese cities.