Abstract: It is very important for us to study whether or how large extent will copyright protection can promote increasement of development performance of the cultural industry. This paper constructs an index system of copyright protection intensity, and measures the copyright protection intensity coefficient, analyses the relationship between the copyright protection intensity and the cultural industry with the linear regression method based on relevant data during 2000-2015 in China. The results show that the intensity of copyright protection in China is increasing, and the relationship between the added value of cultural industry and the intensity of copyright protection is "U" type. The "U" type inflection point appears on the node with the intensity of copyright protection of 2.945, which belongs to the period of 2003-2004. The number of employees in cultural industry, the index of human development and the development performance of cultural industry are positively correlated, while the Internet penetration rates has no significant impacts on the added value of cultural industry. Enhancing copyright protection in the future will promote the development performance of cultural industry.