**Exploring the Rapid Development and Future Trends of Virtual Digital Humans and Media Convergence in China **
The “New Media Blue Book: China New Media Development Report No.14 (2023)”, released jointly by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Journalism and Communication and Social Sciences Academic Press, highlights the explosive growth in the virtual digital human industry in China between 2021 and 2022.
In 2022, five departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued the “Action Plan for the Integration and Development of Virtual Reality and Industry Applications (2022-2026)”, aiming to boost the overall scale of China’s virtual reality industry beyond 3.5 trillion yuan [487 billion USD] by 2026. Cities like Beijing and Shanghai introduced specific policies to enhance the application of digital humans in various sectors like digital marketing, online training, e-commerce livestreaming, audio-visual entertainment, and service consultation.
The Blue Book underscores the increasing commercial value of digital humans driven by the growing user acceptance and consumer willingness. With explicit support from national industrial policies, internet manufacturers, both new and established, have flocked to the market of virtual digital humans, leading to its explosion in 2022.
Moreover, with China’s enforcement of normalized regulatory policies for internet platforms, and the popularity of AI technologies like ChatGPT, the digitalization trend of the new media industry has been further strengthened. This includes the transition of the short-video industry from an incremental to a stock market and the extension of video content beyond entertainment to integrate diverse content into public social life.
The Blue Book also advises traditional mainstream media to actively transform into new mainstream media. It encourages them to take advantage of the transformation phase, integrate resources, adjust their system mechanisms and organizational structures, and participate in the construction of the digital content ecosystem to achieve sustainable development. These changes are expected to significantly contribute to the in-depth development and sustainability of the digital human industry.
https://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2023/07-22/10047900.shtml