Introduction: East Asian cultural industries: Policies, strategies and trajectories

This special section is to explore several key issues related to the development in three of the biggest East Asian cultural industries, namely in China, Japan and South Korea. It addresses a few important dimensions of change that merit analysis: the emergence of East Asian cultural industries in terms of growths in scale and exports; the transnationalization of production and distribution; the relaxation of foreign ownership restraints; and changing relations between the cultural industries and the state. The attempt is to conceptualize the relations between the cultural industries and cultural policy; draw insights from critical media studies and cultural policy studies; and explore what it means for policy makers when culture and creativity move from the margins to the centre of economic activity.