Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, ICBC has earnestly implemented the major strategic deployment of the Central Committee on cultural reform and development and seized the strategic opportunity of cultural progress and development of culture industry in China to step up its financial support. According to statistics, ICBC has provided over RMB 650 billion financing for cultural sectors since 2012. Over the past three years, loans to culture and tourism industry grew by over 30% on average and the loan balance quadrupled in five years, making the industry one of the fastest loan growth sector of the Bank.

According to an official with ICBC, the Bank took the lead in the banking industry to launch the “Culture + Finance” service manual in 2012. Focusing on culture enterprises’ broad and distinct demand for financial service, the Bank created an exclusive financing product system to meet their individualized financing requirements. It has formed full-product, whole-process and complete-chain services  covering various culture industries such as tourist sites, cable television, film and television production, cinema management, artwork, advertisement and jewelry, spinning across the whole process of creation, production, promotion and sales, project development and industrial integration.

Regarding support for cultural creativity, ICBC aimed at light-asset cultural and creative enterprises and innovatively launched financing products such as loan for film & television projects, copyright-pledged loan and loan + fund direct investment. In recent years, it has provided financial support for production and distribution of over 60 films and television programs with good reputation and box office, including Nirvana in Fire, Borrow Gun, Mu Fu Fengyun, After Shock, Battle of Changsha and Eastern Battlefield. With the mode of “direct investment + credit”, the Bank assisted a group of well-known animation enterprises to introduce direct investment funds and provided loans to support quality cartoons produced by China. Meanwhile, ICBC supported the literary creation based on locally featured cultural scenes. It provided nearly RMB 10 billion loans to support many popular performance projects such as The Romance of the Song Dynasty, Grand Ceremony of Kangxi, Dream of Tao, ShaoLin Zen Music Ritual, LingLing Circus, Dream in the Song Dynasty, Amazing Xiangxi and Impression Lijiang.

On support for cultural heritage, ICBC proactively participated in local cultural heritage protection and inheritance projects by supporting a large number of high-quality national cultural works. For instance, the Bank provided fund support for cultural heritages and red tourism spots such as Confucius Museum in Qufu, the ancient city of Qingzhou, the ancient city of Taierzhuang and Mount Yimeng in Shandong Provice. In Nanjing, Jiangsu, it took the lead to organize syndicated loans to build “Lao Men Dong” as a local historical and cultural brand.

In enriching and promoting cultural consumption, ICBC supported development of major scenic spots and provided fund support for more than 500 sites such as OCT Happy Valley, Xixi National Wetland Park, ChimeLong in Guangzhou, Changbai Mountain in Jilin, Huangguoshu Waterfall and Chishui in Guizhou. Meanwhile, it set up an “Internet + cultural consumption + finance” service system to help consumers realize point-to-point connection with local quality tourism enterprises. By logging onto ICBC Mall, consumers could easily book local tourism services provided by over 100 quality enterprises nationwide such as in Hainan, Yunnan, Guangdong and Guangxi and make payment by instalments. The Bank also cooperated with tourist sites in Yunnan and several other areas to build “Smart Tour”, and provide tourists with online/offline-integrated one-stop services covering sightseeing in tourist attractions and shopping.

In boosting transformation and upgrade of the culture industry, ICBC adopted various methods such as investment banking, debt financing instruments, leasing and asset-backed securitization to support domestic culture industry to improve market competitiveness.It has currently established strategic cooperative relationship with over 600 quality culture enterprises such as People’s Daily, CCTV, China Broadcast Network, China ACG Group, Overseas Chinese Town and Phoenix Publishing & Media and provided over RMB 400 billion financing support for more than 5,000 small and medium-sized culture enterprises such as Beijing Artron, Guangdong Zoke and Anhui Whywin International.