According to data released by China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), roughly 82,000 "above-designated-size" cultural and related industry enterprises — firms large enough to fall within the NBS's regular statistical survey — posted combined operating revenue of 3.5569 trillion yuan in the first quarter of 2026, up 6.4 percent year-on-year on a comparable basis. The growth rate extends a steady expansion in China's cultural industry over the past two years.

By sector type, cultural services were the main growth driver: the segment posted revenue of 2.0715 trillion yuan in Q1, up 9.9 percent year-on-year and accounting for 58.2 percent of all above-designated-size cultural enterprises' revenue — the largest share and the fastest growth among the three broad categories. Cultural wholesale and retail posted revenue of 602.4 billion yuan, up 2.6 percent, while cultural manufacturing posted 883 billion yuan, up just 1.5 percent — lagging well behind services and pointing to continued pressure on traditional cultural manufacturing, as asset-light, content- and service-oriented businesses become the industry's main growth engine.

Split between the "core cultural field" and the "related cultural field," the core field — activities that directly meet people's cultural and spiritual needs, such as creation, production, dissemination and exhibition — generated 2.5193 trillion yuan in Q1 revenue, up 9.2 percent, while the related field — covering supporting segments such as auxiliary production and intermediary services, cultural equipment manufacturing and cultural consumption-terminal manufacturing — generated 1.0377 trillion yuan, up just 0.2 percent. The widening gap between the two suggests the industry's growth momentum is shifting away from hardware manufacturing and distribution infrastructure and toward content creativity and service supply themselves.

Under the NBS's "Classification of Culture and Related Industries," in effect since 2018, the cultural industry is tracked across nine major categories: news and information services, content creation and production, creative design services, cultural dissemination channels, cultural investment and operation, cultural entertainment and leisure services, cultural auxiliary production and intermediary services, cultural equipment production, and cultural consumption-terminal production. Category-level data for Q1 2026 show creative design services leading the nine categories with revenue of 677.1 billion yuan, up 12.0 percent; content creation and production posted 841.2 billion yuan, up 10.7 percent; and news and information services posted 519.8 billion yuan, up 10.3 percent — all three logging double-digit growth. By contrast, cultural dissemination channels posted revenue of 425.3 billion yuan, up just 1.4 percent, while the smaller cultural investment and operation and cultural entertainment and leisure services categories posted 11.5 billion yuan and 44.3 billion yuan, up 9.1 percent and 8.3 percent respectively.

More notable still is the performance of "new cultural business formats." Statistics show that 16 industry sub-categories with pronounced new-format characteristics generated combined revenue of 1.6782 trillion yuan in Q1, up 11.2 percent year-on-year — 4.8 percentage points faster than all above-designated-size cultural enterprises — and contributing roughly 79.0 percent of the overall revenue growth of all cultural enterprises. These new-format sub-categories cover internet cultural and entertainment platforms, digital animation and gaming, and the manufacturing of wearable smart cultural devices, and have become the core variable driving the overall growth rate of China's cultural industry in recent years.

Behind the rapid growth of new business formats is the deep penetration of artificial intelligence into content production. Take the micro-drama industry, which has expanded continuously over the past two years: industry data show roughly 128,000 new micro-dramas went online in Q1 2026, with more than 95 percent of them involving AI in production, helping push the micro-drama market past 24 billion yuan. Zhongwenzaixian (China Online), a leading online literature company, disclosed that its AI-assisted comic-drama output rose more than 300 percent year-on-year, and that it had added multiple production lines to expand capacity. The online gaming market likewise kept expanding: according to the Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, China's domestic gaming market posted actual sales revenue of 188.45 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, up 12.17 percent year-on-year; overseas sales revenue of domestically developed games reached $12.372 billion, up 30.22 percent; and the esports gaming market posted actual sales revenue of 89.616 billion yuan, up 11.12 percent. These figures corroborate the double-digit Q1 growth recorded in core categories such as content creation and production and creative design services.

Revenue growth, however, did not fully translate into higher profits. NBS data show total profit of above-designated-size cultural enterprises fell 5.6 percent year-on-year to 257.2 billion yuan in Q1 — a divergence from the 6.4 percent revenue growth that points to "rising revenue without rising profit." This gap partly reflects cost pressures facing some firms amid heavier content investment, technology upgrades and intensifying market competition.

Viewed over a longer horizon, China's cultural industry has posted multiple consecutive years of growth. NBS data previously released show that above-designated-size cultural and related industry enterprises recorded full-year revenue of 15.2135 trillion yuan in 2025, up 7.4 percent year-on-year — a relatively high base against which Q1 2026's expansion is measured. In addition, online literature, online film and television (including micro-dramas) and online games have been officially dubbed the cultural industry's "new three," and have been incorporated into national development plans; public data put the number of active online literature writers in China at more than 7 million, with tens of millions of works, making this a key pillar behind the double-digit growth recorded in the content creation and production category.

On the policy front, China's Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Cultural Industry" in September 2026, setting goals for the cultural industry to achieve a "leap" in scale, overall strength and comprehensive benefits by 2030, build a sounder industrial system, and further consolidate the industry's status as a pillar of the economy, while laying out key tasks across seven areas, including raising supply efficiency and cultivating new growth points. Analysts say that as growth slows in traditional cultural manufacturing and distribution channels, the continued double-digit growth of asset-light segments such as content creation and creative design, alongside new technologies and business formats led by artificial intelligence, mirrors a broader shift in China's economic structure away from investment- and manufacturing-led growth and toward services and consumption — a shift that underpins official ambitions to elevate the cultural industry from an "important industry" into an "important engine" of economic and social development.