Page 319 - Proceedings Collega2023

THE NON-WESTERN BELT: MALAYSIA’S SOCIO-CULTURAL
INITIATIVES

Azizah Hamzah

University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

azizah@um.edu.my

ABSTRACT

This article aims to illustrate the popularity of Asian cultural and creative industries (CCIs)
beginning from around 2000. According to the market research findings from PricewaterhouseCoopers,
the global content market in 2020 was about USD2.4 trillion. Although United States is leader of the global
content production, China and Japan began to enter as global leaders, followed by South Korea with a 2.6
per cent share valued at USD623 billion.

Since the CCI is one of the contributors to the GDP of countries, this paper is also an attempt to
showcase Malaysia’s promotion of the local content as engines of growth, development as well as
integration of ASEAN. The government has introduced policy implementations and initiatives to ensure
growth in the CCI which at present stands at 1.9 per cent to the GDP. These renewed plans of action shall
harness collaboration between the ASEAN as well as the Republic of Korea.

Keywords: cultural industry; peripheral; imperialism; creative economy; non-western

INTRODUCTION

Asia was once a peripheral economy in the global entertainment and media industry (E&M),
positioned at the receiving end of the one-way flow of cultural and creative economy (CCI) from the top
global media leaders such as USA, Western Europe (especially the UK) and non-Western cultural capitals
in Latin America. UNESCO has reported that the one-way flow of CCI content had for decades fueled the
economy of leading media producers/ exporters, injecting about USD 2,25 billion into their economies,
creating 29.5 million jobs.

Why or what had contributed to this late start-up, delaying our Asian participation in the global
media marketplace while other spatial leaders clinched the market and maintained their economic lead in
the global entertainment and media industries. Research in E&M and unequal power relations in the world
would often open a wide discussion on the role of media in facilitating and sustaining forms of imperialism.
The creative economy within media studies would project findings that demonstrated the dominance of
Western especially US communication technologies corporations (in telecommunications, satellite,
computing) and content providers (film, television, news agencies and publishing) in the global market

International Conference on Local Wisdom of the Malay Archipelago (COLLEGA 2023) Page - 306 -