At present, festival atmosphere in various places is gradually "going online". The Mid-Autumn Huimin Concert in Chongqing High-tech Zone has entered the business district, Yichun Shanggao County Cultural Troupe "sends plays to the countryside", and Beijing municipal parks have launched more than 140 garden activities... High-quality cultural resources that were once "raised in the boudoir" have become the scenery around people's fingertips. "Culture +" is a "cross-border integration question" that continues to yield new answers.
Culture benefits the people, which not only warms people's hearts, but also stimulates consumption. Recently, the 2026 National Day Cultural and Tourism Consumption Month has been launched. It plans to hold more than 20,000 cultural and tourism activities and issue more than 310 million yuan in consumer vouchers and other consumer subsidies. The increased supply of high-quality products and the issuance of consumer subsidies will not only help optimize the consumption structure, but also help improve the quality of consumption.
What culture empowers is not just consumption. In Caoxian County, Shandong Province, a piece of Hanfu drives a tens of billions industry chain; from Harbin to Altay, "culture + tourism" ignites urban economic vitality; "Village Super" and "Village BA" have successfully emerged from the circle, and "Culture + Sports" has entered a new track for rural revitalization. Cultural "soft power" is constantly being transformed into economic "hard power".
At present, with the development of economy and society and the improvement of people's living standards, the spiritual and cultural needs of the people are increasing day by day, and the requirements for the quality, taste, style, etc. of cultural products are getting higher and higher, and they are increasingly diversified, multi-level, and personalized. Take tourism as an example. Tourists are no longer satisfied with "getting off the car to take pictures and getting on the bus to sleep." Instead, they pursue understanding the historical context behind the mountains and rivers, pursuing in-depth experience and cultural resonance. Another example is that in recent years, cultural activities organized and led by the masses have become commonplace, from grassroots literary creation to daily short video recordings. People are no longer satisfied with enjoying spiritual and cultural products, but also participate in cultural creation and production.
If demand changes, supply cannot remain the same. These changes have injected new impetus into cultural development and also put forward new requirements. However, compared with the people's growing needs for a better life, there is still a big gap in public cultural services. To varying degrees, there are problems such as uneven allocation of urban and rural resources, weak product and service supply, and low facility utilization. Promoting the quality and efficiency of public cultural services has become a top priority.
The “15th Five-Year Plan” outline proposes to “implement actions to improve the quality and efficiency of public cultural services and promote high-quality cultural resources to reach the grassroots level.” The "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for the Construction of the Public Cultural Service System" recently issued by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism proposes to "promote the quality and efficiency of public cultural services through reform", including four aspects: promoting high-quality cultural resources to reach the grassroots, innovating the management and operation mechanism of public cultural services, improving the mechanism for social forces to participate in public cultural services, and promoting the integrated development of public cultural services.
The top-level design has a "road map", and grassroots practice must "accelerate". From exploring various places, we have accumulated a lot of experience. For example, one of the outstanding shortcomings of current cultural center services is the lack of basic and regular service items. In recent years, cultural centers in Zhejiang, Shenzhen and other places have created “art self-study rooms” and “citizen shared exhibition halls” and other service projects, which are effective ways to make up for this shortcoming; for another example, only with precise supply can cultural services be “appropriate”. Chaoyang District in Beijing launched a "Cultural Needs Map" survey, Hangzhou used big data to analyze citizens' cultural needs, and Taizhou created more than 1,000 programs for citizens to choose from. From "the government serving dishes" to "people ordering", what has changed is the supply concept, which is close to the people's aspirations.
Culture is the inner temperament of a place’s land and water, and it is also the foundation of happiness for people’s lives. Focusing on the future, we should improve the grassroots public cultural service network, expand the supply of high-quality public cultural services, promote the digital development of public cultural services, and innovate the public cultural operating mechanism. When the "source of living water" of culture truly empowers the "vast blue waves" of the economy, Chinese-style modernization will have a deeper and more lasting power.
