The museum recently signed an agreement with online business giant Alibaba to build a platform called Wenchuang Zhongguo, which means "cultural creativity in China".
Li Liusan, deputy director of the museum, says the new platform will share information on its collections with designers from Alibaba to help them develop different products.
"It (the agreement) will also help attract investors and solve a problem, which has been faced by many museums－the lack of money－to develop ideas into products," says Li.
The platform will be open to small-scale museums all over the country, which often have excellent collections that have the potential to be developed into popular souvenirs, but have no expertise to do so.
An offline business center will also operate in a pilot free trade zone in Shanghai to help the process, say Li.
Despite the new emphasis on cultural souvenirs, Wu from the Ministry of Culture says the protection of intellectual property will be a priority.
"Museum operators should work harder to protect their intellectual property when they open up to the market," say Wu.
Giving an example of violations, Shan from the Palace Museum says that while the museum published only 285,000 copies of its desk calendars in 2015, there were more than 1 million copies sold.
Separately, museums will be allowed to become shareholders in corporations using the intellectual property of their collections to develop cultural derivatives, says Wu.
"What we are doing now is to start something new," he adds.
"Of course, as more businesses interact with museums, it will create another problem: How to prevent total commercialization and make sure museums are still public institutions.
"New issues will arise but we will deal with them," he says.
