17th Central Committee’s “Culture Document” – 9: Arranging the Classical Records

This is the 5th chapter of the CCP central committee’s “cultural decision”.  The 4th chapter’s last paragraphs’ translations or explanations can be found here.

Main Link: http://gb.cri.cn/27824/2011/10/26/2625s3413678_2.htm

5) Exerting Great Efforts to Development of Non-Profit Cultural Causes, Safeguarding the People’s Fundamental Cultural Rights

五、大力发展公益性文化事业，保障人民基本文化权益

To meet the people’s fundamental cultural needs is the fundamental task of socialist cultural construction. It is necessary to maintain governmental guidance, and to strengthen the building of a basic cultural infrastructure, to perfect a public cultural network, to let the broad masses enjoy basic public cultural services in accordance with the criteria of non-profitability, fundamentality, impartiality, and convenience, at no costs or or at favorable prices.

满足人民基本文化需求是社会主义文化建设的基本任务。必须坚持政府主导，按照公益性、基本性、均等性、便利性的要求，加强文化基础设施建设，完善公共文化服务网络，让群众广泛享有免费或优惠的基本公共文化服务。

a) Build a public cultural service system. Strengthen the role of public cultural service as the materialization of the people’s fundamental cultural rights. It is necessary to perfect a functional, practical and highly efficient cultural service system which covers the cities and the countryside, with public finances as support, non-profitability as the backbone, the entire people as the object of this service, and by safeguarding that the people and the public watch television, listen to the radio, read books and newspapers, conduct appraisals of these, and have a share in public cultural activities and similar fundamental cultural rights. Process regular budgets for major cultural products and service projects and non-profit cultural activities. Take measures for government procurement, project subsidies, directional [or directed] sponsorship, loans, tax deduction and similar policies to encourage all kinds of cultural enterprises to participate in public cultural service. Encourage the gratuitous use of state-invested, subsidized or copyrighted cultural products within the public cultural system. Strengthen the construction of cultural centers, museums, libraries, art galleries, science museums, memorial halls, workers’ cultural palaces, youth palaces, and similar infrastructure and patriotic-educational model bases, and perfect cultural service open and free for society, encourage other state-owned cultural units educational institutions etc. to carry out non-profit cultural activites, and provide facilities for mass activities in public places. Comprehensively plan and build a cultural infrastructure on a basic level, equally emphasize project planning, construction and management, apply resource integration, and joint construction and use. Strengthen neighborhood and public cultural infrastructure, include neighborhood cultural centers’ construction in urban and rural planning and design, and broaden investment channels. Perfect cultural service infrastructure for women, minors, the elderly, and the handicapped. Guide and encourage forces within society to provide facilities and other forms of participation in public cultural service, by setting up entities, by project funding, and sponsorship. Promote the creation of national cultural service system model areas. Establish index systems for the public cultural service systems and methods to measure their achievements.

(一)构建公共文化服务体系。加强公共文化服务是实现人民基本文化权益的主要途径。要以公共财政为支撑，以公益性文化单位为骨干，以全体人民为服务对象，以保障人民群众看电视、听广播、读书看报、进行公共文化鉴赏、参与公共文化活动等基本文化权益为主要内容，完善覆盖城乡、结构合理、功能健全、实用高效的公共文化服务体系。把主要公共文化产品和服务项目、公益性文化活动纳入公共财政经常性支出预算。采取政府采购、项目补贴、定向资助、贷款贴息、税收减免等政策措施鼓励各类文化企业参与公共文化服务。鼓励国家投资、资助或拥有版权的文化产品无偿用于公共文化服务。加强文化馆、博物馆、图书馆、美术馆、科技馆、纪念馆、工人文化宫、青少年宫等公共文化服务设施和爱国主义教育示范基地建设并完善向社会免费开放服务，鼓励其他国有文化单位、教育机构等开展公益性文化活动，各类公共场所要为群众性文化活动提供便利。统筹规划和建设基层公共文化服务设施，坚持项目建设和运行管理并重，实现资源整合、共建共享。加强社区公共文化设施建设，把社区文化中心建设纳入城乡规划和设计，拓展投资渠道。完善面向妇女、未成年人、老年人、残疾人的公共文化服务设施。引导和鼓励社会力量通过兴办实体、资助项目、赞助活动、提供设施等形式参与公共文化服务。推进国家公共文化服务体系示范区创建。制定公共文化服务指标体系和绩效考核办法。

b) Developing a Modern Mass Media System. To improve the energy and influence of socialist advanced culture, it is necessary to accelerate the development a dissemination system with advanced technology, efficient transmission, and broad coverage. Party newspapers and journals, news agencies, radio and television stations, and important publishing houses must be strengthened; editorial, distribution, and dissemination systems continuously be perfected; and digitization and expansion of effective coverage be accelerated. The building of international dissemination must be strengthened, first-class international media be created, the rate of own news material, of news first published, and effective news¹⁾ must be increased. Create a unified, jointly active, safe and reliable national emergency broadcasting system. Perfect the building of a national digital library. Integrate cable television networks, and build a television network company on the national level. Promote the integration of communication networks, broadcasting networks, and the internet, the building of an integrated broadcasting control platform, a pattern of innovative business, bring all sorts of information network facilities into a function of cultural dissemination, and achieve connected, interflowing, orderly operations.

(二)发展现代传播体系。提高社会主义先进文化辐射力和影响力，必须加快构建技术先进、传输快捷、覆盖广泛的现代传播体系。要加强党报党刊、通讯社、电台电视台和重要出版社建设，进一步完善采编、发行、播发系统，加快数字化转型，扩大有效覆盖面。加强国际传播能力建设，打造国际一流媒体，提高新闻信息原创率、首发率、落地率。建立统一联动、安全可靠的国家应急广播体系。完善国家数字图书馆建设。整合有线电视网络，组建国家级广播电视网络公司。推进电信网、广电网、互联网三网融合，建设国家新媒体集成播控平台，创新业务形态，发挥各类信息网络设施的文化传播作用，实现互联互通、有序运行。

c) To establish a transmission system for superior traditional culture. Superior traditional culture condenses the Chinese nation’s restless strife and the spiritual richness of long-standing renewal is the solid foundation of developing the advanced socialist culture, and an important sustenance for the building of the Chinese nation’s common spiritual home. It is necessary to know the motherlands traditional culture, to remove what is useless, to make old things work in our times [or to put the past at the service of the present], to make it newly helpful in development, with equal emphasis on maintaining and protecting what is useful, and on its popularization. [It is necessary to] strengthen the excavation and elucidation of traditional cultural ideological values, to maintain the fundamental elements of national culture, and to let superior traditional culture become the people’s inspiration on their road forward to spiritual strength. Strengthen the arrangement and publication of cultural classics, and promote the digitization of the classical resources. Strengthen the country’s important cultural and natural heritage, the units in charge of protecting major cultural objects, the maintenance and restoration of famous historical cities, towns, and villages, and the transmission of immaterial cultural heritage. Unearth traditional popular festivals’ contents, and broaden the development of superior traditional education’s popularization. Bring into play the fundamental function of popular education in the innovation of cultural dissemination, improve the contents of lessons in superior traditional culture, and improve the establishment of teaching and training bases for superior traditional culture. Vigorously promote and regulate the use of a common state language and and written characters, scientifically protect every nationality’s lettering. Enable the prosperous development of the cause of national minorities’ culture, carry out the work of protecting the national minorities’ cultural peculiarities, strengthen party newspapers and party magazines in the language of the national minorities, radio and television programs, publications and translations. Strengthen cultural exchanges and cooperation with Hong Kong and Macau, and all kinds of cultural exchange with Taiwan, to unfold Chinese splendid²⁾ culture together.

(三)建设优秀传统文化传承体系。优秀传统文化凝聚着中华民族自强不息的精神追求和历久弥新的精神财富，是发展社会主义先进文化的深厚基础，是建设中华民族共有精神家园的重要支撑。要全面认识祖国传统文化，取其精华、去其糟粕，古为今用、推陈出新，坚持保护利用、普及弘扬并重，加强对优秀传统文化思想价值的挖掘和阐发，维护民族文化基本元素，使优秀传统文化成为新时代鼓舞人民前进的精神力量。加强文化典籍整理和出版工作，推进文化典籍资源数字化。加强国家重大文化和自然遗产地、重点文物保护单位、历史文化名城名镇名村保护建设，抓好非物质文化遗产保护传承。深入挖掘民族传统节日文化内涵，广泛开展优秀传统文化教育普及活动。发挥国民教育在文化传承创新中的基础性作用，增加优秀传统文化课程内容，加强优秀传统文化教学研究基地建设。大力推广和规范使用国家通用语言文字，科学保护各民族语言文字。繁荣发展少数民族文化事业，开展少数民族特色文化保护工作，加强少数民族语言文字党报党刊、广播影视节目、出版物等译制播出出版。加强同香港、澳门的文化交流合作，加强同台湾的各种形式文化交流，共同弘扬中华优秀传统文化。

d) Speed up a united urban-rural cultural development. Add to the quantity of cultural services in the countryside, reduce the gap between urban and rural cultural development – to build a new pattern of united [or concerted] cultural development between the cities and the countryside is of major significance for the advancement of the new socialist countryside. With the countryside and the China’s western regions as key areas, the building of county-level cultural palaces and libraries, combined township cultural stations, rural cultural rooms must be strengthened, rural infrastructure must be deepened in terms of radio and television broadcasts, shared use of cultural information resources, rural film screenings, farming book rooms and other cultural projects which are beneficial for the people, with broadened coverage, and the elimination of blind spots, increased standards, perfected service, and improved management. Support and assistance for cultural services in old liberated areas [or early revolutionary base areas, 革命老区], national minority areas and poor areas must be intensified. The entire people’s reading, sports, and cultural scientific hygiene sanxiaxiang³⁾ must be deepened and promoted, and scientific and educational writing styles, law and hygiene, the “Four Communities” (四进社区), giving pleasure to the grassroots and other activities must become regular.  Companies, communities [or neighborhoods] must be lead to carry out activities beneficial to migrant workers, and migrant workers be in the best possible ways be integrated into the urban cultural service systems. Joint mechanisms between the cities and their rural hinterlands must be established, cultural resources be allocated between cities and the countryside in a reasonable way, cities be encouraged to support the countryside, and helping the countryside must become a fundamental indicator of a city’s civilizational level. Cultural units must be encouraged to provide mobile services, network services, media be encouraged to arrange publication and frequency supply in the countryside, and the work of having party papers and magazines be subscribed and read for free at the rural grassroots levels. Cultural enterprise must be supported in building chains of cultural networks at the grassroots and in the countryside, cinema chains be promoted, and performing arts be extended into cities and counties, and performing artists be supported in going deep into the grassroots and the countryside to perform. Special funds are to be established at the central, provincial and municipal levels, and the allocation of certain amounts of centrally-provided funding to the building of culture in [rural] towns and villages be guaranteed.

(四)加快城乡文化一体化发展。增加农村文化服务总量，缩小城乡文化发展差距，对推进社会主义新农村建设、形成城乡经济社会发展一体化新格局具有重大意义。要以农村和中西部地区为重点，加强县级文化馆和图书馆、乡镇综合文化站、村文化室建设，深入实施广播电视村村通、文化信息资源共享、农村电影放映、农家书屋等文化惠民工程，扩大覆盖、消除盲点、提高标准、完善服务、改进管理。加大对革命老区、民族地区、边疆地区、贫困地区文化服务网络建设支持和帮扶力度。深入开展全民阅读、全民健身活动，推动文化科技卫生“三下乡”、科教文体法律卫生“四进社区”、“送欢乐下基层”等活动经常化。引导企业、社区积极开展面向农民工的公益性文化活动，尽快把农民工纳入城市公共文化服务体系。建立以城带乡联动机制，合理配置城乡文化资源，鼓励城市对农村进行文化帮扶，把支持农村文化建设作为创建文明城市基本指标。鼓励文化单位面向农村提供流动服务、网点服务，推动媒体办好农村版和农村频率频道，做好主要党报党刊在农村基层发行和赠阅工作。扶持文化企业以连锁方式加强基层和农村文化网点建设，推动电影院线、演出院线向市县延伸，支持演艺团体深入基层和农村演出。中央、省、市三级设立农村文化建设专项资金，保证一定数量的中央转移支付资金用于乡镇和村文化建设。

____________

Notes

¹⁾ This is about Chinese international media (such as China Radio International, CNTV, etc.) should begin to set the global news agenda, with news which a) hasn’t been published elsewhere before, and b) actually catches international interest. The intention probably is to make not only such media’s newscasts internationally relevant, but their editorials, too.

²⁾ Just as in the previous lines, when translated as “superior”, the adjective used in the document is 优秀 (yōuxiù). However, I chose “splendid” as a translation here, because the intended meaning of “superior” isn’t necessarily “superior to other cultures”.  A discussion of what yōuxiù usually stands for might be useful here.

³⁾ san xia xiang refers to the three activities mentioned above, and seem to involve stays by college students or graduates in the countryside to “spread science” there, especially in these three fields.

____________

Related

» Propaganda will Set You Free, Aug 9, 2009

____________

Continued here »