China is not squeamish about putting a price and index on its culture. In a quirky development last month, China launched its first cultural industry index at the Shenzhen Stock Exchange... The OCT Index, which as of now hasn’t generated much notice, does signal a shifting trend - China’s determination to change its growth model.

China launched its first cultural industry index on Friday to provide an indicator of how the sector is performing... Experts said that OCT index will indicate the development level and trends of China's cultural industry, and reflect the operational and profitability situations of listed culture-related firms.

When China embraced the world with its opening-up policy and extraordinary economic growth, the Awakening Dragon had embarked on a golden journey to transform itself, from being labor-intensive to being knowledge-intensive, from rising dependently on the growth of hard power to a full-blown renaissance of soft power, from the crude, cut-price "Made in China" to an imaginably refined, top-notch "Created in China".

A leading group of cultural system reform and on Friday called for accelerating China's cultural development to boost the country's soft power... Local governments have tackled difficulties in transforming for-profit cultural agencies into enterprises, establishing a cultural service system and law enforcement agencies for the cultural market and coming up with innovative ways to promote culture abroad.

During the session, leaders of the Party approved a decision on deepening reform of the cultural system and promoting the development of the cultural industry in a bid to build a country with soft power.