A visitor posing with “At the Window,” a work by Chinese shadow-puppetry artist Dang Feihua, during a special exhibition of traditional shadow puppetry and contemporary art held last December at Nanchizi Art Museum in Beijing Photo: IC PHOTO

The transmission of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) across generations is a vivid testament to the enduring vitality of Chinese civilization. Today, these practices are no longer confined to historical records or museum displays; through commercial innovation, they are increasingly woven into everyday life. A wide range of ICH-based creative products has captured consumer attention, emerging as a cultural force that contributes to China’s high-quality economic and social development. Since 2023, our research team has investigated the state and trajectory of ICH innovation by engaging with artisans, surveying ICH-related enterprises, and attending ICH expos, with the aim of uncovering the pathways and mechanisms of commercial innovation and providing insights for the living transmission and sustainable renewal of ICH.

Diversification of actors driving ICH innovation

Innovation is the key to sustaining the vitality of ICH. Today, a diverse set of actors—including master artisans, younger practitioners, cultural and creative platforms, and commercial enterprises—are working together to chart new paths for ICH transmission and innovation.

Master artisans remain central to ICH transmission, possessing refined techniques and skills cultivated over generations. Fieldwork reveals that they have a strong sense of mission and pride in their craft, yet many are advanced in age and unfamiliar with innovation and market dynamics. By contrast, younger practitioners demonstrate sharper awareness of consumer trends and a more global outlook. With the help of the internet, they quickly grasp cultural currents and consumption patterns around the world, particularly among younger demographics. They are also more willing to transcend traditional boundaries, combining modern design elements with traditional craft to ensure that ICH products resonate with contemporary lifestyles and aesthetics. Younger practitioners generally fall into two groups: those who have grown up within family traditions, with deep emotional ties to the craft; and those who, motivated by strong personal interest, acquire ICH skills through apprenticeships or formal training.

For example, in the case of Suzhou embroidery (Su embroidery), national-level artisan Yao Jianping has long upheld the traditional spirit of the craft through exquisite techniques such as double-sided embroidery and “void-and-solid free-form stitch embroidery.” Her daughter, Yao Lan, while inheriting her mother’s skills, uses online platforms to track global fashion trends, integrating modern design concepts with traditional techniques to produce innovative Su embroidery works that effectively engage younger consumers.

Cultural and creative platforms serve both as “laboratories” for transforming artisanal skills and as windows through which the public encounters ICH, thus playing a vital bridging role in transmission and innovation. With the rise of the “China chic” (guochao) trend, new generations of designers and artists have joined traditional practitioners to create collaborative platforms for ICH-based cultural products. These platforms not only collect, curate, and display diverse ICH products but, more importantly, function as intermediaries, linking market demand with designers and artisans to co-create competitive products. For example, the “Made in Nature” platform, after more than a decade of in-depth fieldwork and documentation of traditional crafts, has reimagined shadow puppetry, bamboo weaving, kite-making, paper flower folding, printmaking, and embroidery into interactive toy kits to appeal to young consumers, thereby broadening the market reach of these crafts.

Commercial enterprises also act as indispensable catalysts of innovation. First, internet technology companies leverage digital tools to support ICH innovation. Tencent, for example, established a Digital Culture Laboratory that collaborated with art academies to build a large-scale model of Taijiquan movements, making the martial art more accessible to the public.

Second, enterprises integrate ICH into broader industrial chains. The Songtsam hotels, based in China’s Xizang Autonomous Region and Yunnan Province, incorporate Tibetan architectural materials and styles into their buildings and decorate guest rooms with embroidery, thangka paintings, and other ICH works. They also offer hands-on experiences, such as incense-making and thangka painting, enabling guests to engage directly with ICH.

Third, digital platforms facilitate ICH innovation through traffic support and entrepreneurship programs. In 2024, Douyin launched the “Hundred Young ICH Project,” training a thousand cultural creators through online and offline courses, trend discovery guidance, and project incubation.

Cross-sectoral pathways of ICH innovation

The diversification of actors has enabled cross-sectoral innovation, transforming neglected traditional crafts into popular consumer products under the guiding principle of “seeing people, seeing objects, seeing life.” Out of these developments, four distinct pathways of ICH commercial innovation have taken shape.

The first pathway is to respond to contemporary consumer needs by developing products that embody traditional charm while aligning with modern aesthetics. For instance, Dang Feihua, a third-generation shadow puppeteer of the Wang family, has incorporated characters favored by modern consumers into shadow puppetry, creating lifelike figures such as the “King of Pop” Michael Jackson, the White Bone Spirit performing a popular dance called “Subject Three,” as well as figures popularized in recent years through video games and animated films, such as Sun Wukong from “Black Myth: Wukong” and Ne Zha.

The second pathway involves applying modern design concepts and tools to create entirely new product categories. Innovation is not limited to adding modern features to traditional forms; it requires discovering new market spaces. For example, emerging artist Chen Fenwan has integrated traditional paper-cutting with contemporary art to produce striking three-dimensional installations, thereby opening a new market for the craft.

The third pathway is to reinterpret cultural symbols such as historical narratives, craft techniques, and decorative motifs to develop distinctive ICH-based intellectual property (IP). The realization of ICH’s economic value lies not only in its utility but also in the creation of symbolic identity grounded in respect for its cultural origins. National-level practitioner Yang Huazhen, for example, has reconfigured floral and botanical motifs from Tibetan and Qiang weaving and embroidery to produce multiple IP brands, collaborating with well-known domestic and international brands to expand their cultural influence.

The fourth pathway harnesses technological power to transform production methods and modes of expression, reconstructing the innovation ecosystem of the ICH cultural industry. Dang Feihua, for example, addressed the problems of pollution and high cost in traditional shadow-puppet dyeing by experimenting with E. coli as a source of natural pigments. Generative artificial intelligence also provides new design possibilities. “Yunmo AI,” China’s first large-scale model for traditional motifs, allows traditional designers not only to search existing designs but also to generate novel patterns, enriching their creative repertoire.

Collaborative innovation and market feedback

The capacity of traditional practitioners to sustain innovation is key to transforming ICH from traditional practice into contemporary art. This capacity depends on two mechanisms: multi-actor collaborative innovation and iterative market feedback.

The collaborative innovation mechanism entails co-creation among governments, arts universities, enterprises, and practitioners. Governments establish supportive policy frameworks; universities and companies provide training bases; and practitioners proactively develop their own skills. Many practitioners reported benefitting from national training programs, which enabled them to study modern design at universities across China. These experiences enhanced their aesthetic and technical competencies, deepened their cultural confidence and market awareness, and, most importantly, fostered collaborations with faculty, students, designers, and artists—greatly advancing the integration of traditional craft with contemporary design.

The market dynamic feedback mechanism refers to ICH practitioners directly engaging with the market and enhancing their capacity for continuous innovation through market feedback. Many use short videos and live-streaming to narrate cultural stories and showcase innovation processes, drawing on likes, shares, comments, and suggestions as indicators of consumer demand to inform iterative product development. They also participate in ICH fairs, cultural industry expos, and design competitions. By engaging directly with consumers, media, and fellow ICH practitioners, they gain insights into cutting-edge design concepts, market demand trends, and potential collaboration opportunities.

In conclusion, the sustained innovation of ICH is not a matter of choosing between “tradition” and “the market.” Rather, it is the art of “better preserving and expressing tradition within the market.” By safeguarding the core cultural values of ICH with reverence while embracing the opportunities of commercialization with openness, ICH can expand its space for survival, invigorate creativity, and truly transform from a historical “heritage” into a contemporary “living art,” radiating timeless brilliance.

Liu Yuhuan is an associate professor from the School of Economics and Management at Southwest Jiaotong University, and Yin Juelin is a professor from the School of Business at Sun Yat-sen University.