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Scholars and industry leaders discuss cultural export at HKBU: digital technology revolutionises traditional cultural exchange
13 Jun, 2025
Digital technology is fundamentally transforming cultural communication paradigms, while the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area accelerates its development as an international science and technology innovation hub. Against this backdrop, the 2025 Bay Area Digital Culture Forum was held on 12 June at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU).
Organised by HKBU’s Institute for Innovation, Translation and Policy Research (ITPR), and supported by Tencent Strategic Communications Center, the Forum opened with remarks from Professor Terence Lau, Interim Chief Innovation Officer of HKBU. The event brought together distinguished scholars and industry experts from Hong Kong, Macau, and Mainland China, including Mr Raymond Chan, Assistant Director (Entrepreneurship) of HKBU’s ITPR; Professor Xiang Yong, Director of the Cultural Industry Research Institute at Peking University; Ms Liao Fangli, Director of Strategic Communications at Tencent; Professor Zhi Feina of the Chinese National Academy of Arts; Professor Liu Chengkun, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Development at Macau University of Science and Technology; and Professor Chang Jiang, Executive Director of the Global Communication Research Institute at Shenzhen University. They engaged in in-depth discussions on “Digital Technology and Cross-Cultural Collaboration.” The Forum concluded with a comprehensive summary by Dr Jiang Wei, Associate Dean of HKBU’s School of Creative Arts.
Experts concurred that in the digital era, AI-powered technologies are reshaping global cultural exchanges. The fusion of technology and culture is accelerating innovation within the cultural industries. Digital platforms, enriched with high-quality content, have become vital channels for cultural exchange with international audiences, and fostered a distinctive digital culture among global Generation Z.
Digital Technology: China’s New Global “Business Card”
Earlier this year, DeepSeek attracted worldwide attention by achieving high-performance AI inference with minimal computing power, showcasing China’s innovation in AI and digital technology. Alongside DeepSeek, Tencent’s HunYuan and Alibaba’s QianWen foundational models continue to evolve, advancing their rankings in authoritative global benchmarks such as Chatbot Arena and becoming top players in the international arena.
Digital technology transcends science and engineering; it redefines the cultural industry and emerges as a “universal language” for global communication in the digital age. Mr Raymond Chan explored the potential for innovation in the cultural industry through the use of AI, highlighting the limitless creative possibilities AI offers to artistic creations. HKBU has already applied AI across various areas including film production and intellectual property protection. Leveraging Hong Kong’s unique advantages, the University aims to promote deeper integration of AI and cultural technologies, facilitating China’s digital culture and technology to reach global audiences through Hong Kong.
In his keynote, Professor Xiang Yong introduced the concept of “aesthetic intelligence” in the digital era, presenting his team’s pioneering theoretical and practical work in computational art and AI-driven aesthetic education. They are developing the “Luo Shen Fu—Chinese Aesthetic Gene Bank,” which decodes traditional Chinese aesthetic elements such as elegance, melancholy, and ethereality through advanced AI models. This initiative, progressing through intelligent creation systems, aesthetic corpora, and collaborative IP projects, aspires to build a cutting-edge platform that revitalises Chinese aesthetic spirit and empowers Eastern lifestyle aesthetics.
Ms Liao Fangli emphasised that as AI gains global prominence, digital technology is becoming China’s new lingua franca for international dialogue, reconstructing the fundamental technological framework underpinning human civilisation exchanges. The “dialogue gap” between civilisations is steadily being bridged by “digital bridges” constructed through technology and platforms. This new “business card” of digital technology will further enhance China’s global cooperation and drive the growth of the worldwide digital economy.
Digital Platforms Propel the Cultural Exports, Boosting Global Cultural Exchange
In recent years, China’s “new three” cultural exports—online dramas, online literature, and online games—have achieved outstanding success in international markets, forming a synergistic triad of product innovation, technological advancement, and investment strength.
Professor Zhi Feina noted that China’s cultural exports continue to rise, driven by improving content quality, and steady, diverse industry expansion. Chinese digital enterprises, leveraging their technological edge and broad application scenarios, have become the driving force behind the “new three” overseas exports, providing critical support for the global reach of Chinese digital content.
Professor Chang Jiang illustrated the export of Chinese online literature through three phases, using China Literature Limited (Yuewen) as a case study. The first phase focuses on translating Chinese works for foreign markets, supported by AI translation technologies, opening windows for global audiences to access Chinese culture. The second phase nurtures local original content that blends Chinese cultural elements, fostering the “third culture” to deepen intercultural exchange. The third phase embraces an “IP+” model, extending online literature into TV series, comics, cultural tourism, and other new industries. It aims to “think globally, act locally,” promoting diversified industry growth and offering pathways for international dissemination of digital youth culture.
Digital Empowerment of Youth Cultural Exchange: Hong Kong as a “Super Connector”
Professor Liu Chengkun highlighted that digital technology has dismantled the spatiotemporal barriers of cultural exchange. Historically constrained by geography, language, and traditional media, cultural interaction today can occur anytime, anywhere through a screen or an app, enabling youth to engage globally. Digital empowerment not only transforms communication modes, but also reshapes the power dynamics of cultural dissemination, evolving youth cultural exchange from “one-way output” to “multi-dimensional co-creation.”
Professor Liu stressed the importance of empowering youth as “cultural captains” in the digital age, encouraging them to innovate culturally within digital spaces, blend diverse cultural elements, create new cultural forms, and drive cultural development. Digital platforms can bridge cultural differences and facilitate exchanges among youth across countries and regions, serving as vital conduits for cultural dialogue.
As digital natives, youth are the primary users of digital platforms and the main drivers of innovation and dissemination. Today’s youth-focused digital platforms exhibit unprecedented diversity and rapid evolution. It is worth studying Hong Kong's roles in this ecosystem.
In his opening remarks, Professor Terence Lau stated that exploring cross-cultural collaboration and youth innovation driven by digital technology not only captures the pulse of the times, but also inspires our thinking about the future of cultural communication and youth development. In recent years, HKBU has actively responded to China’s 14th Five-Year Plan and Hong Kong’s strategic positioning as an international innovation and technology hub and a centre for East-West cultural exchange. The University focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, and policy research to deepen the integration of academic achievements with industry and societal needs.
Mr Raymond Chan views Hong Kong as a critical “super connector” linking Mainland China with international markets, playing an indispensable role in promoting China’s digital technology and cultural exports. Leveraging its status as a global financial and trade centre, Hong Kong can provide efficient commercialisation channels for Mainland digital technology enterprises to expand overseas.
By attracting global capital, talent, and resources, Hong Kong can accelerate Mainland technology projects to meet the international market demands and facilitate rapid overseas technology transfer. Hong Kong’s international communication environment and multicultural landscape enable Mainland digital content to reach overseas audiences more accurately, bolstering the global spread of “Digital Chinese Culture.” As a “super connector,” Hong Kong uniquely serves as a bridge in the globalisation of technology and cultural exports.