National People's Congress Deputy and General Manager of Beijing Qianmen Duyichu, Wu Huaxia: Integrating Multiple Business Formats to Boost "Intangible Cultural Heritage+" Cultural and Tourism Consumption

Reporter Cao Chen, Securities Times

At this year’s National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Wu Huaxia, a deputy to the National People’s Congress and general manager of Beijing Qianmen Du Yi Chu, focused on promoting the integrated development of culture, commerce, tourism, sports, and health, as well as scientifically advancing transparency in the catering sector.

Wu Huaxia stated that currently, the integration of culture, commerce, tourism, sports, and health is showing vigorous growth and has become an important means to deepen multi-asset consumption, innovate diverse consumption scenarios, and expand domestic demand. Through the organic combination of cultural experiences, commercial consumption, tourism, and leisure sports, many landmark projects have emerged across various regions, successfully creating new landmarks and popular spots. This not only promotes high-quality economic development but also meets people’s needs for a better life.

However, the development of integrated culture, commerce, tourism, sports, and health still faces many challenges and difficulties. Holidays are crucial opportunities to launch cultural and tourism activities, attract crowds, and unleash consumption potential. By focusing on festivals and cultural and sports IP, and through methods such as traffic attraction and intangible cultural heritage empowerment, there is significant room for innovation and growth in creating integrated cultural-tourism activities and cross-sector consumption scenarios to activate spending.

Wu Huaxia proposed two suggestions. First, around traditional Chinese festivals, special folk festivals, New Year’s Eve, and emerging cultural and sports IP like “Village BA” and “Scottish Premier League,” encourage shopping malls, commercial streets, and business districts to host various offline cultural entertainment, sports events, and shopping promotions that integrate culture, commerce, tourism, and sports. This aims to proactively create scenarios that encourage residents to go out and spend, enrich commercial space consumption types, and enhance cultural experiences for consumers, thereby invigorating the consumption market and boosting catering and retail spending.

Second, nationwide, promote the introduction of high-quality catering and retail formats into cultural and tourism venues such as parks, scenic spots, stadiums, performance venues, museums, and art galleries. Under the premise of not damaging landscapes, polluting the environment, or hindering sightseeing, upgrade catering and retail services to improve space utilization and economic benefits.

She also mentioned that China has the world’s most comprehensive intangible cultural heritage protection system, and local intangible cultural heritage is becoming a hot topic for activating tourism and driving consumption. It is recommended to promote the implementation of “Intangible Cultural Heritage+” policies (including tourism and consumption), guiding localities to incorporate local intangible cultural heritage elements into offline cultural entertainment, sports events, and shopping promotions that integrate culture, commerce, tourism, and health. This will create more innovative cases like “Dali Tie-Dye” and “Chuxiong Yi Embroidery,” using intangible cultural heritage as a city brand, strengthening the cultural confidence of contemporary youth, and promoting the integrated development of culture, commerce, tourism, and health with local characteristics centered on intangible cultural heritage.