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Bridging the Gaps (2020-2024) consists of three awards from UKRI/AHRC UK-China Creative Industries Partnership Fund. It builds on two UKRI/AHRC awards: Creative Economy Development in China Newton Fund Ghost in M50 Host (2018-2021) and UK-China Creative Industries Partnership Seed Fund Bridging the Gaps prelude (2019). Working with a team of research and industry partners across the UK and China, the five consecutive awards are captured and led by Dr Haili Ma and jointly funded by UKRI/AHRC (£970k) and China research and industry partners (£2,278k).

Adopting digital performance making as a research method, the project series examine the distinction and compatibility of UK-China Creative Industries whilst testing UK creative companies' China market entry strategy. By imbedding the UK digital SMEs within key UK and China cultural institutions (Shanghai Yue Opera House, Shanghai Textile Museum and Leeds Industrial Museum etc.) in the performance making, the process explores the possibility of nurturing a shared audience across the UK and China for joint content creation, and ways of assisting UK creative companies soft landing and long-term growing in the Chinese market.

The content of the digital series tells the story of China's transition from traditional industries to the Creative Industries at the turn of the 21st century, and its impact on class reconstruction and cultural taste. Between 1994 and 1998, over half a million female textile workers in Shanghai alone were made redundant under the central policy to evolve the nation from Made to Created in China. Shanghai (all-female) Yue Opera (yueju), which emerged as China's first urban female entertainment under the patronage of female textile workers in the mid-1900s, and developed as a high art representing New China's female working class under the direct support of Mao Zedong, only finds itself struggle to survive in the 21st century. Its loyal audience - the Chinese female working class - lost their political status and economic patronage power whilst China is nurturing a fast-rising middle class and their cultural taste.

Similar post-industrial transformation took place in the UK, as depicted in Brassed Off (1996) and The Full Monty (1997). Unlike in the UK, however, this part of the history remains one of China's taboo topics. Few of China's generation Z holds the knowledge of painful transition and formation of China's Creative Industries. Bridging the Gaps aims to evoke a shared memory on the formation of the Creative Industries as a global national policy and its socio-economic impact on the local communities across China and the UK.

Bridging the Gaps main outputs include seven short documentary films, three digital performances: Song of the Female Textile Workers (2020-2022), Song: The Future (2022-2023) and The Music Tree (2023-2024), as well as journal paper The Missing Intangible Cultural Heritage in Shanghai Cultural and Creative Industries (Ma 2022) and monograph Understanding Cultural and Creative Industries through Chinese Theatre (Ma 2024).

Building on the leadership and experience in developing UK-China Creative Industries, Dr Haili Ma further established The UK-China Creative Industries Hub in early 2025 to continue facilitating the wide UK creative companies developing partnerships in China. The HUB is currently fully funded by China research and industry partners through in-kind and cash contribution, totalling over £2million a year, and the support is ongoing and growing.