Industrial Linkages and Digital Synergy: The Input-Output Analysis of Chinese Cultural Industries

This article probes the industrial linkages and corresponding structures of Chinese cultural industries from the perspective of demand and supply by combining input-output analysis with social network analysis. It finds that the significant economic contribution of Chinese cultural industries lies in creating productive demand for other sectors. Benefitting from industrial standardization, cultural manufacturing industries possess intensive demand and supply linkages and directly participate in national economic activities. The demand and supply linkages of cultural-content industries present internal complexity and are generally deficient in reflexivity. Digital cultural industries, spanning structural holes, show synergistic structures in the demand and supply linkages. These findings offset the paucity of industrial linkage analysis in extant research on cultural industries while unveiling the linkage structures of cultural industries, providing evidence for policymakers and practitioners to effectively guide the development of cultural industries.