This chapter intends to examine the degrees of digitalization with several Chinese museums renowned for their IP creations in reflection of the combination of ancient Chinese culture and modern design thinking and to describe the transformation in Chinese digitalization. Attributing to some inclusive policies, museums are enforced to shift their functions for visitor engagement, which plays a role as a social service with non-profit ambition in improving the tourism economy and social welfare. Our understanding of the enabling and limiting mechanisms paves the way for more research on the paradoxical implications of transformative changes in practical enhancement in the Chinese cultural economy.
TopIntroduction
Digital transformation is known as the use of information, computers, communications, and networking technologies to alter enterprise operations, business, and value creation processes. In this favorable environment, museums are gradually grasping the opportunities of the times to further strengthen their basic public service functions (Vial, 2019).
Spring Festival meets Winter Olympic Games for yearly tourism opportunities and flavour. According to the data center of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, during the 7-day Spring Festival holiday in 2022, the country's domestic tourism amounted to 251 million people, down 2.0% year-on-year, recovering to 73.9% of the same period of the 2019 spring holiday; the domestic tourism revenue reached 289.198 billion yuan, down 3.9% year-on-year, recovering to 56.3% of the same period of the 2019 spring holiday. No major safety accidents occurred in the national culture and tourism system, and the holiday market was generally safe, stable, and orderly (Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China, 2022).
Figure 1. Distribution of the top 100 museum cultural and creative products sources of sales in 2021
As Figure 1 shows, as of 2021, among the 1,861 cultural and creative products from the flagship stores of major museums on the Tmall platform1, 69% of the top 100 selling cultural and creative products were from the Forbidden City Museum, followed by the National Museum and the British Museum. Among the local museums, only Suzhou Museum made the list, accounting for only 2%. Since the percentage of sales in other local museums is less than 0.1%, it is not reflected in the table.
Figure 2. Changes in the total number of museums and the number of new museum in China from 2010 to 2020
Figure 2 indicates that, in 2010, the number of domestic museums in China was as low as 3415. However, after 10 years, this number increased by 69% to 5788. The number of new museums per year ranges from 181 to 345, with a relatively stable number of new museums added each year. The above evidence is sufficient to show the steady trend of museum construction and development in China, which also lays the foundation for the rapid development of museum culture and creativity in recent years.
Understandably, Chinese planners and scholars are assessing the social, psychological, and environmental impacts of such a rapid growth of tourism (Shan, 2014). A museum is essentially a cultural unit of public interest, with the main functions of collection, education, display, record, etc.. It is a building that exists to meet the diverse spiritual and cultural needs of the people (Connell et al., 2021) and needs to generate appropriate economic value to maintain the continuation and development of the building (Lin, 2007). Museums around the world are diverse with many different collections of artifacts and cultural specimens, the embodiment of the iconic, valuable and intangible cultural heritage of different places or regions.