It seems that China is running a "huge" "cultural trade deficit:"

 Chinese cultural products should
be further promoted to the international market to narrow China’s cultural trade
deficit with other countries, top officials said.

    Ding Wei, assistant minister of culture, described
China’s deficit in international cultural trade as "huge" at yesterday’s press
conference held by the State Council Information Office.

    "Our statistics years ago showed that the ratio of
imports of cultural products to exports was 10 to 1, and this ratio has only
been enlarging in recent years," he said.

    Ding would not give any specific figures regarding
the deficit, but statistics from the General Administration of Press and
Publication show that China has bought more than 4,000 copyrights from the
United States in recent years, but the copyrights exported to the United States
during the same period amounted to only 16.

    Ding said traditional Chinese thinking is dragging
the development of the country’s cultural industry. "The concept of a cultural
industry is new to most Chinese people, as traditionally culture and business
are separate matters."

     Now, I don’t want to seem like a conservative stickler here, but there is just one small problem: big chunks of "Chinese" culture – I am thinking here of Confucianism and Taoism and Buddhism – would pretty much hold that culture and business should be separate matters.  So, maybe Mr. Ding is really saying that China has to get on the stick and start producing more infantile pop Western culture to catch up with the US and Japan.  We really do need more Chinese reality TV shows: "Survivor: Songhua River Espisode;" "The Real World: Pudong;" "Complete Hutong Makeover."

    Actually, I have nothing against bad Chinese pop culture.  It can be quite amusing at times.  My gripe is with the simultaneous government-sponsored invocations of Confucianism.  On the one hand, officials want to say that they are virtuous, upright Confucian gentlemen; on the other they want to trash Confucian ethics and go for the money.  Let’s just be honest about it, please.  When it comes to culture in China today, as Mr. Ding exhorts, it’s "show me the money."