Guangzhou: The 'millennium commercial capital' finds a new cultural identity

Guangzhou's identity has always been shaped by openness. Often described as the country's "millennium commercial capital" and with more than 2,200 years of urban history, Guangzhou is China's oldest port and a historic gateway to global markets.

If Chengdu shows how youth culture can energize a city from within, Guangzhou reveals how culture can propel outward, stemming from a heritage shaped by trade, exchange and a long-standing openness to the world.

The 5th edition of the World Cities Culture Report (WCCR) highlights Guangzhou's cultural strategy, which builds directly on this legacy and applies that same outward energy to culture. The result is one of China's most textured and policy-rich cultural cities, ancient and entrepreneurial at the same time.

A city built on exchange

Let's look at the historical backdrop. Guangzhou's Cantonese opera, its traditional music and the legendary Thirteen Hongs of Canton trading houses – the Thirteen Factories, where the Qing government managed foreign trade – are heritage assets of a city that has spent two millennia at the intersection of cultures.

Today that heritage coexists with contemporary cultural spaces, a flourishing book bar scene and 734 bookshops – a figure that speaks to a reading culture embedded in everyday urban life. With 44% green space across the city, Guangzhou has also earned recognition as a UN International Garden City and holds the UN Best Practice Award for Improving Human Settlements.

The policy architecture

Cultural governance in Guangzhou is structured around the Guangzhou Administration of Culture and the Development and Reform Commission, aligned with China's 15th Five-Year Plan. The culture department's budget runs to approximately 1.775 billion yuan (about $260 million), with grants to arts and cultural organizations totaling around 690 million yuan.

The city hosts 84 higher education providers – including 106,000 students studying arts and humanities – alongside 45 museums, 828 heritage and historical sites, 255 cinemas and 8 theaters. Some 100,000 people are employed in cultural and creative occupations, supported by 3,069 businesses in the sector.

The Flower Market: heritage as urban innovation

No single initiative captures Guangzhou's approach to culture more vividly than the Spring Festival Flower Market. Recognized as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2021, the market traces its origins back 2,000 years.

Recent years have seen a wave of innovation layered on top of ancient tradition: street food activations, drone light shows and the newly introduced Water Flower Market have extended its reach into the night-time economy, drawing visitors beyond daylight hours and generating economic activity well beyond the market itself. The Flower Market is now one of the WCCR's cited examples of how cultural tourism revenue can be used to fund broader cultural activity.

Reinventing intangible heritage: 'Recommended Gifts from the Bay Area'

Guangzhou has also introduced the 'Recommended Gifts from the Bay Area' initiative, a vivid example of a well-thought-out policy turning intangible culture into contemporary design.

It's a simple concept – take Lingnan heritage, including its rich food traditions, Cantonese opera aesthetics, folk festivals and the visual language of lion dance, and reinterpret it through modern design and product development. Traditions like 'Pantang's Five Treasures' – also known as the Five Delicacies of Pantang – become the inspiration for new products that carry cultural identity into everyday life, both for Guangzhou's residents and for visitors coming to the city for the first time.

The WCCR highlights this as an example of a quiet economic development strategy: by stimulating the creative economy around Lingnan heritage assets, the city is building new industries on old foundations.

Design Week and cultural diplomacy

Guangzhou Design Week, founded in 2006, has grown into one of Asia's most substantial annual design events. It now operates through partnerships with over 30 countries and connects with global events such as Milan Design Week. In the WCCR's regional analysis, it is named as a key driver of internationalization and tourism for the East Asian city group – an instrument of cultural diplomacy that positions Guangzhou not just as a commercial city but as a creative capital in the international arena.

What Guangzhou gets right

Guangzhou's story in the report shows that its strength lies in balance. This is a city deeply local and historically global at the same time.

In a period where cities worldwide are reassessing how culture supports growth, Guangzhou demonstrates how a trading city can leverage its historical openness to build a modern cultural economy. The Flower Market, Design Week and the digital culture agenda are not isolated projects. They reflect the philosophy that heritage stays alive in conversation with the present and that a port city built on exchange should keep the emphasis, especially now when culture is as much of a currency as commerce has ever been.

Zaruhi Poghosyan is a multimedia editor for CGTN Digital. This is the fourth article in our city-by-city series exploring five Chinese cities that are investing in long-term resilience through culture and redefining what it means to be a global city in the 21st century. Data and findings cited in this article are drawn from the 5th edition of the World Culture Cities Forum Report. Next in the series: Nanjing.

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