Tech Boosts Hunan's Cultural Transformation

Over the past five years, Hunan has taken a development strategy that emphasizes adapting to local conditions, systematic planning, and reform and innovation. With the Malanshan (Changsha) Video Cultural and Creative Industrial Park as its flagship, the province is building a culture and technology convergence zone.

The new foundation

In 2024, Hunan and the municipal government of provincial capital Changsha jointly launched the Malanshan Audio and Video Laboratory, a new kind of research and development institution to develop an innovation system for the entire audio and video industry chain. It covers content capture, editing, production, transmission and display.

Zeng Xiong, secretary of the Party Working Committee of Malanshan, said a data center is under construction in Malanshan. "Once completed, the total computing power will be increased to 500 petaflops with a total storage capacity of 500 petabytes."

The center will support the training of audio and video large models with hundreds of billions of parameters, as well as platform operations and model development, providing a solid foundation for technological innovation.

Leveraging its technological and computing advantages, Malanshan now hosts more than 4,300 enterprises, 22 research institutions and innovation platforms, and around 64,000 professionals.

The rise of Malanshan is a testament to Hunan's innovative practices in cultivating new cultural industries. Over the past five years, Hunan has established multiple research and application platforms, continuously breaking technological barriers to bolster the growth of emerging cultural sectors.

Reshaping content production

AI is being used to accelerate film restoration. "Combining AI-powered automated restoration with manual fine-tuning, we streamlined the upstream process from technological R&D to practical implementation," said Long Xinbin, technical director of Changsha Yunshang Lanshan Technology Co., Ltd.

In March 2021, the company's first restored color version of the film Lei Feng premiered in Changsha, also the home of Lei Feng, a soldier known for helping others.

Now, the company is planning to use AI-generated content (AIGC) to make mobile-friendly short videos of classic films to attract young audiences.

Museums are also part of the transformation. In 2024, the Hunan Mango Digital Art Intelligence Technology company launched a digital platform called Shanhai Museum, literally "mountain and sea," a digital portal to showcase artifacts from renowned museums.

Using more than 30 proprietary patents, the technical team has achieved full-process automation from data capture to 3D reconstruction of artifacts. A single artifact can be modeled in less than 10 minutes, while the overall cost is slashed by about 80 percent.

At the Hunan Museum in Changsha, over 1,000 cultural artifacts were 3D modeled in just 22 days. So far, the platform has put more than 78,000 digital artifacts online from 98 museums around the world.

"We are developing the first large-scale model for Chinese historical and cultural heritage with Peking University to provide a low-cost, high-efficiency AIGC tool for the innovative transformation of traditional culture," said Fang Fei, general manager of the company.

This will not only strengthen technological research and development upstream of the chain but also support downstream market applications and the transmission of cultural heritage.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), Hunan leveraged digital technology to promote the digital transformation and innovative application of high-quality cultural resources, and advanced key technologies such as high-performance computing for video.

In 2024, the revenue of enterprises above designated size in the cultural sector in Hunan exceeded 300 billion RMB, up 10 percent year on year.

Hunan's recommendations for its own 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) include accelerating the development of new cultural industries such as audio-visual content. The province aims to cultivate leading enterprises in the cultural sector and strengthen original capabilities in integrating culture and technology.

Source: Science and Technology Daily