Entering Hunan Xiangjiang New District: New cultural faces on the export list

China News Service, Changsha, November 6 (Hu Yutong) A pair of Hunan embroidered tiger-head shoes made by entrepreneurs in the Xiangjiang New District of Hunan were put into production immediately after being displayed in the exhibition hall of the United Nations Headquarters in New York; on the shelves of a large electrical appliance chain store in Tokyo, a Chinese-developed editing software was displayed side by side with local Japanese products; on the TV screens of African viewers, Chinese animations in local languages ​​were being updated.

Three scenes, pointing to the same coordinates: Hunan Xiangjiang New District, the first national-level new area in the central region. The familiar label here used to be Zoomlion's heavy industrial industries such as pump trucks and cranes. In the past two years, code, animation, intangible cultural and creative products, AI tools, etc. have been added to its overseas list.

Tools going overseas: software, hardware and workflow

Wanxing Technology, located in China Electronics Software Park in Xiangjiang New District, Hunan, has business coverage in more than 200 countries and regions around the world, with cumulative active users exceeding 2 billion. In 2025, overseas revenue will account for 93.21%. Its video editing software, Wondershare Filmora, has been deeply cultivated in Japan for more than ten years, with cumulative users exceeding 49 million, and it has entered more than 200 large offline mass stores such as BicCamera and Yodobashi Camera.

"Many people think that software is just a technological product, but creative software is the infrastructure of cultural production." Tang Fangxin, general manager of Wondershare Technology's Asia-Pacific Marketing Center, said that overseas users use tools developed in Changsha to cut videos and create content. This process itself is the participation of Chinese technology in global cultural production.

Following the idea of ​​"tools are infrastructure", Wondershare Technology has extended this line to short drama production. Its subsidiary Wanxing Theater Company has access to a variety of mainstream video generation large-scale models, opening up the entire link of scripts, storyboards, generation, and editing, and the storyboard creation cycle for a single episode has been reduced to 10 episodes per person and one day. The overseas simulation drama it empowers has been online on the AnyReel platform for two days, with views exceeding 2.3 million.

Hunan Sijiu Technology, which took root in Xiangjiang New District, Hunan in 2018, started with its HTVRONT brand from consumables such as lettering films and sticky notes, and gradually expanded to intelligent heat transfer machines and cutting plotters, coupled with self-developed graphics software and AI drawing functions. Its products cover more than 100 countries and regions, and have served more than 10 million users.

"When users buy a heat press machine, what they want is not just a piece of equipment, but printing the patterns in their minds on clothes." said Chen Jicang, executive president of Sijiu Technology. In European and American families, hot stamping works that used to require professional design skills can now be completed by inputting a text description, AI generating patterns, and pressing with one click of a machine.

Taking content overseas: gameplay, narrative and localization

Caohua Interactive obtained the authorization from the American comic "Xenozoic Tales". Based on the classic gameplay of "Dinosaur Kombat", it implanted the Zhangjiajie quartz sandstone peak forest landscape into the game copy, dressed the characters in Miao costumes and Hanfu, and launched a Bruce Lee-linked version. "Arcade Dinosaur" has more than 20 million registered users and is currently being tested in app stores in Singapore and Malaysia.

"When setting up a project, we first need to look at who the users are, and then see if the cultural elements can be turned into gameplay." Chen Xi, the project leader of "Arcade Dinosaur", said that cultural implantation cannot be hard-labeled and must be allowed to be felt naturally by players during the process of playing dungeons and wearing fashionable clothes.

Products such as "Cell Survivor" and "Car Jam" produced by game companies in Xiangjiang New District, Hunan are also growing in overseas markets. The former contributed more than half of the sales in the Japanese market in early 2026, and the latter has been downloaded more than 20 million times across all channels in the past year.

The localization of animation has advanced to the script stage. Hunan Liyu Culture returned to Changsha from Shenzhen in 2016 to start a business at the foot of Yuelu Mountain. Its production "Classmate Boy" will be selected into the "China-Africa-China-Arab Audiovisual Sharing Project" of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television in 2025 and will be promoted to Africa and the Arab region. Hunan Comics Cartoon Co., Ltd., which owns the classic IP "Rainbow Cat and Blue Rabbit", turned its lens on football youth training and launched a realistic three-dimensional animation "Strong Shot" in an attempt to reach new overseas audiences.

The skits are faster paced. Qinjiu Network's self-developed full-link short drama production platform has reduced production costs by more than 80% compared to real-life production, and its monthly output has increased from about 100 to 1,000. It has overseas coverage in more than 120 countries and regions, and its overseas App has more than 100,000 VIP members. The language localization of short plays overseas relies on the large-scale micro-short play intelligent translation center built in Hunan - its self-developed AI video translation system supports 25 languages, and the translation cycle has been compressed from the traditional one or two weeks to a few hours.

Daily intangible cultural heritage: from showcases to streets

Chen Liqun and Chen Shuangfeng started from a small office in 2016 and embroidered Hunan embroidery into tiger head shoes. Both of them and Xu Hongyan, who makes custom cheongsams at the foot of Yuelu Mountain in Hunan, come from the representative inheritors of national-level intangible cultural heritage of Hunan embroidery. In 2025, the couple sold 1 million pairs of tiger-head shoes. In March 2026, this handmade shoe will be unveiled at the exhibition hall of the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The overseas channel follows the three legs of "TikTok for traffic, independent website for branding, and Etsy for handmade high-end models."

"Cultural consumption requires cognitive accumulation, and taking intangible cultural heritage overseas is a long process." Chen Liqun said that the team is negotiating agency matters with Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh TV Station, and plans to take Hunan intangible cultural heritage overseas with them in the future.

Xu Hongyan integrates Hunan embroidery into cheongsam customization. The team self-developed an AI body measurement system. Customers take three photos and 26 body shape indicators are automatically entered. The body measurement pass rate increased from less than 50% to 87%. The brand "Yunwanqian" has opened more than ten overseas accounts on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and sells more than 300 sets of cheongsam overseas monthly to more than 30 countries. Overseas customers often send photos of their pets and horses, and designers embroider the patterns on their clothes accordingly, so that each person has a unique version. "The more local it is, the more national it is, and the more global it is." Xu Hongyan said.

Ecological promotion: talents, parks and policies

During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the GDP of Hunan Xiangjiang New District exceeded 520 billion yuan, ranking 6th among 19 national-level new districts. In 2025, the new area's foreign trade import and export volume will be 82.8 billion yuan, and cross-border e-commerce transaction volume will increase by 20%. According to the "China Game Industry Report from January to June 2026", the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in the overseas market in the first half of 2026 was US$12.372 billion, a year-on-year increase of 30.22%.

What supports these enterprises in going global is the accumulation of many years in the new area: Central South University, Hunan University and other universities and colleges are clustered together; China Electronics Software Park integrates R&D, production and distribution into the same park; 14 universities in Hunan send nearly 4,000 graduates of animation-related majors every year. In July 2026, the first online audio-visual creation base in Xiangjiang New District was officially awarded a license, using the "order incubation" method to open up the entire chain of enrollment, training, settlement, and order taking. The partners introduced a real commercial order pool of 260 million yuan covering platforms such as Hongguo Short Drama, and the first batch of more than 100 creators settled in to accept orders.

The platform's thrust is also following up: Since its establishment in 2024, the Xiangjiang New Area Overseas Chinese Community "Double Recruitment and Double Introduction" Alliance has held a number of overseas special matchmaking meetings, and has served more than 500 Hunan companies to develop overseas markets. In September 2026, "Several Measures of Hunan Province to Promote the Innovative Development of Digital Trade" was issued to support the translation, cross-border distribution, and intellectual property rights protection of animation and game companies.

At present, Hunan Xiangjiang New District’s cultural exports have covered many categories such as tools, games, animations, short plays, intangible cultural heritage supplies, etc.