Culture vultures and the rise of China’s soft power

They are reshaping a nation. From state-backed mega museums to privately-funded contemporary art spaces, the expansion of China’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums, or GLAM, sector highlights how the nation narrates its past and imagines its future.

China’s museum arena has expanded at an unmatched pace this century. From 2010 to 2024, a new museum has opened, on average, every 1.5 days. There were 382 new museums registered in 2022 alone – and a total of 6,833 registered towards the end of 2024.

None of this is a coincidence. China’s museum boom reflects a coordinated national strategy that links heritage, urban development, the creative industries and soft power.

The broader GLAM sector has expanded in parallel, with significant government investment in public libraries, archival digitisation projects and large cultural precincts. Museums, however, remain the most visible symbol of this transformation.

China is reported to have had only around culture/china-s-great-museum-leap-forward-20131207-iyp81″>25 museums when the Communist Party gained power in 1949. For several decades, museums would remain relatively limited in number and scope – strictly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party or CCP.

Cultural policies

These were didactic spaces shaped by ideologically. In 1942, Chairman Mao Zedong chaired a three-week forum where he argued there was no art detached from or independent of politics.

Cultural policies thereafter retained revolutionary aims under the CCP. Dedicated “work units” managed all artistic creation up until the end of the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong’s death in 1976.

This made way for the Open Door Policy led by the nation’s new leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978. With the slogan “to get rich is glorious,” this policy led to significant transformation in leadership and belief systems.

The 1970s to 1990s marked a period of relative openness and avante-garde expression.

The 1990s and early 2000s further saw a gradual liberalisation of the sector, alongside the rise of contemporary art. Independent artist-run spaces flourished in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – often in repurposed factories or warehouses.

Today, however, grassroots initiatives have mostly been consolidated into state-backed cultural districts. Beijing’s 798 Art Zone – which now hosts more than 150 galleries – is one of the first examples of this shift.

What began in 2002 as a space for independent artist-led experimentation became part of a structured cultural economy from mid-2003. This curated strategy has been rolled out through a number of successive five-year plans.

In the most recent ones – including the draft outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) – museums have been framed as instruments of national storytelling.

They allow the state to curate narratives that promote social cohesion, while balancing global discourse with national priorities. And this is central to China’s ambition to become a cultural superpower. Broadly speaking, there are four major categories of museum.

Multimedia works

They are historical and archaeological, revolutionary and party history, science and technology, and contemporary art and private institutions.

At the Sanxingdui Museum in Sichuan, which was opened in 2023, audiences can view 4,000-year-old relics from the Shu civilisation. Or they can experience multimedia works inspired by Chinese mythological creatures at The Hong Kong Palace Museum.

Science and technology museums have multiplied, as have industrial heritage centres and niche institutions dedicated to ceramics, design and animation.

Private contemporary art institutions such as Beijing’s X Museum and UCCA position themselves within international art circuits. Yet, even these operate within broader municipal planning frameworks.

The nation’s museum expansion is highly structured. The National Cultural Heritage Administration sets targets for development, encourages free public access policies, and supports digitisation initiatives.

For citizens, expanded access has democratised cultural participation. For local governments, museums can be used to anchor urban projects that help with city branding and tourism.

Yet China’s rebranding through its creative industries is not a phase. It is part of building the nation’s identity. The goal is not merely to preserve, but to project – to shape both domestic identity and global perception.

Smaller experimental and independent voices may struggle within this increasingly formalised framework.

Future visions

Writing for the Australian Institute of International Affairs, research assistant Guang Yang questioned how much room exists for dissenting or marginal histories when ideological parameters are embedded in national storytelling projects.

Museums curate memory, define heritage and stage visions of the future. The growth in the sector signals a nation investing heavily in how it sees itself and how it wishes to be seen.

Justine Poplin is a Teaching Associate for the Faculty of Education at Southern Cross University in Australia.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.