Hollywood blockbusters have stimulated a debate on whether they promote or discourage the world's cultural diversity at a forum held in Hangzhou Thursday.

"Local partners are part of our businesses, and we are always concerned about cultural diversity during our filmmaking," said Hugh L. Stephens, Time Warner's senior vice president of international relations and public policy in the Asia Pacific region, at the Third Globalization Forum on World Cultural Diversity that kicked off in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, on Tuesday.

"Like in the big hit Harry Potter, we used a British script, shot in England and chose local actors, which proved to be a very successful formula," Stephens said.

For years, Hollywood blockbuster movie studios such as Time Warner, the 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures and DreamWorks have dominated the world's film markets by cultivating a considerable amount of fans around the globe.

They have evoked, however, suspicion and complaints from governments and experts who worry that Hollywood will squeeze out the market share of their domestic companies, thus reducing cultural diversity and innovation.

Though the output of American films and television programs occupies only about 6.7 percent of the world's total, those films control more than 50 percent of the world's market. American TV programs control more than 70 percent. The American movie and TV industries have ranked first among peers since 2000, according to the forum.

"This situation will confine the world's cultural products to a single standard, which will result in the dying out of the inspiration of mankind's civilization and culture," said Li Shenming, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The American film industry controls over 96 percent of its domestic film market and a larger part of film markets in other countries, said Li.

For example, China's film industry had been dominated by imported films, mainly American, for 10 years, scooping up most of its box office profits as well as its young audiences, Li said.

On Oct. 21, 2004, 154 member nations of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly in Paris to approve a convention to protect the diversity of cultural expression and local cultures from ever-growing globalization, strengthening the grounds for maintaining a screen quota system.

At the UNESCO General Conference held in Paris, only the United States and Israel opposed the pact, which was titled "The Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.''

The vote marks a historic achievement in the campaign to ensure countries to retain the right to shape their own cultures.

The screen quota system, which aims at protecting domestic film industries from big-budget Hollywood movies, requires local cinemas to fill 40 percent of their screens with locally produced movies.

(Xinhua News Agency November 11, 2005)