Reconstructing makerspaces in China: mass innovation space and the transformative creative industries

The study examines how China appropriates and transforms the global idea of makerspaces into "mass innovation spaces" (MISs) within a state-led maker movement. Against the backdrop of the national "mass innovation, mass entrepreneurship" (MIME) initiative, the authors trace a terminology shift from makerspace (创客空间) to MIS (众创空间) that reflects a policy drive to move from "made in China" to "created in China" and to reorient cultural and creative industries (CCIs) from individualistic cultural creativity to collective, technology-led innovation. The research questions ask what MISs are in the Chinese context, how they differ from global makerspaces, and what these differences imply for the transformation of CCIs. Using semantic network analysis of 305 MIS mission/self-definition statements, the paper argues that China’s top-down approach repurposes the Californian ideology of the maker movement into a "Shenzhen ideology" combining economic progressivism with social conservatism, thereby reshaping CCIs and the role of the state in fostering innovation.

The paper situates MISs within debates on CCIs and maker cultures. Critical scholarship on CCIs often prioritizes consumption, innovation, and individual creativity while overlooking material production and traditional arts, particularly in Western post-industrial contexts. In China, policy has shifted from cultural to creative and digital creative industries, emphasizing the convergence of technological innovation with cultural creativity, further blurring boundaries and advancing an instrumental, entrepreneurial cultural policy agenda. The global maker movement, originating largely in the US and Europe, is associated with counterculture, DIY citizenship, openness, and bottom-up innovation. Key related spaces—makerspaces, hackerspaces, and FabLabs—share overlapping features but have distinct histories and emphases: makerspaces focus on creative production across art, science, and engineering; hackerspaces foreground digitally mediated community organization and peer production; FabLabs comprise a globally governed network with specified tools and standards. Prior comparative work (e.g., Van Holm, 2014) finds substantial overlap among makerspaces and hackerspaces, with FabLabs often linked to education. In China, following early grassroots spaces (e.g., SZDIY, 2009) and the 2015 MIME push, MISs proliferated and became embedded in CCIs policy and practice. To compare MISs with global notions, the authors assemble key makerspace elements—space, members/community, resources, activities, and values/philosophy—to guide analysis.

The authors conduct a semantic network analysis (SNA) of self-definitional or mission statements from 305 active Chinese MISs to identify their key characteristics and how they compare with global makerspaces. Data sources included official websites and social media (Weibo, WeChat official accounts, Facebook, LinkedIn), and user-maintained directories (hackerspace.org, makerspace.com, FabLab.io). Initial lists were compiled using searches for MIS (众创空间) and makerspace (创客空间), then combined and deduplicated. Inclusion criteria required that organizations: (1) have an official website and/or social media presence updated within the last six months; and (2) show evidence of ongoing operation (e.g., calls for projects, workshops) within the past six months. Organizations without web or social media presence were excluded. For each MIS, the authors manually extracted mission/self-definition text (e.g., "about us," "our story," "who we are"). Texts were processed using Python in Jupyter Notebooks. Given Chinese language segmentation challenges and the prevalence of function words (e.g., 的, 了, 在), the team adapted an open-source Chinese NLP package from GitHub and created a custom stopword list to clean the word frequency table. Frequency counts were converted into a Boolean table and used to build semantic networks. SNA consisted of identifying high-frequency nodes/terms and their co-occurrence patterns to reveal clusters and thematic structures across the five analytical categories: space, members/community, resources, activities, and values/philosophy.

Frequency analysis of 305 MIS self-definitions revealed top terms and clusters centered on entrepreneurship, innovation, and incubation. The 10 most frequent words included: entrepreneurship (923; 3.73%), innovation (514; 2.08%), incubation (352; 1.42%), provide (331; 1.34%), platform (264; 1.07%), space (259; 1.05%), mass innovation space (248; 1.00%), entrepreneur (213; 0.86%), maker (211; 0.85%), and resource (205; 0.83%). The semantic network (Figure 2) showed three prominent clusters: entrepreneurship, innovation, and incubation.

• Space: Frequent terms were space, MIS, incubator, office, base, center, and park. MISs are described and function as incubators and coworking-style workspaces for innovation and entrepreneurship, often situated in tech or creative industry parks.
• Members and community: Dominant terms included entrepreneur, maker, team, institution, talent, and college student. MISs primarily target entrepreneurs and start-ups (including STEM-oriented college students), contrasting with global makerspaces’ commons-based peer communities of makers/hackers/DIYers.
• Resources: Salient terms were platform, resource, technology, industries, operation, technique, expertize, internet, service platform, angel investment, coach, hardware, and market. MISs emphasize service intermediation—connecting to finance, expertise, markets, and government—rather than providing in-house fabrication tools typical of makerspaces.
• Activities: Key terms were entrepreneurship, innovation, incubation, invest, build, development, connect, management, product, establish, communication, construct, and design. Entrepreneurship dominates MIS activity profiles, with associated actions oriented toward business development and networking.
• Values/philosophy: Frequently cited were culture, creativity, China, model, unite, cooperation, nation, support, and international—signaling collective, national, and cooperative imaginaries rather than individualistic, countercultural maker ethics.

Findings indicate MISs are redesigned spaces and communities primarily for entrepreneurs and start-ups rather than commons-based peer-production (CBPP) communities. Organizationally, MISs tend to have traditional, hierarchical, and state-influenced structures, reflecting the top-down transformation of China’s maker movement under the MIME initiative. The emphasis on college students (particularly STEM) aligns with demographic studies of Chinese makers. The ethos of MISs shifts the maker movement from the gift economy (open sharing without expectation of return) toward market-oriented entrepreneurship, under dual political-economic pressures. As intermediaries, MISs provide coworking offices, investment access, and connections to markets, government, and external resources, often embedded in science/technology parks or creative industry clusters. This co-location leverages cluster effects and aligns with a broader policy shift in CCIs from cultural creativity (wenhua chuangyi) to technological innovation (jishu chuangxin), reflecting stronger technological determinism. The study interprets this reconfiguration as part of a broader "Shenzhen ideology"—a hybrid of socialism and technological determinism that blends social conservatism with economic progressivism—contrasting with the Californian ideology underpinning the global maker movement.

The paper demonstrates that China’s MISs, while inspired by global makerspaces, are distinct in space design, community orientation, activities, values, and governance. MISs are defined as workspaces that support individual entrepreneurs and start-ups by providing a range of internal and external resources, with significant government participation and leadership. This transformation exemplifies the localization of the maker movement into a "Shenzhen ideology," aligning with national narratives such as the Chinese Dream and emphasizing collectivism, technological innovation, and progress. By embedding MISs within creative and tech clusters, China’s CCIs are being remade toward an instrumentalist, entrepreneurial, and tech-driven policy framework. The authors suggest future research should further probe the connections, potential, implications, and limits of MIS-CCI integration and the evolving global maker movement.

• Sampling frame: No central directory of MISs exists; the study relied on user-maintained directories, search engines, and social media, which may omit relevant spaces or bias toward more visible organizations.
• Inclusion criteria: Only organizations with active websites/social media updated in the past six months and evidence of recent operations were included; entities without an online presence were excluded, potentially skewing the sample.
• Self-reported texts: Analysis is based on self-definitional statements, which may reflect promotional language rather than actual practices.
• Language processing: Chinese NLP required adaptations and custom stopword filtering; segmentation and preprocessing choices may influence frequency and co-occurrence results.
• Cross-sectional design: The dataset captures a specific time window and may not reflect temporal dynamics or policy shifts beyond the collection period.