China’s cultural industry has witnessed robust development, according to the communique on national economic and social development in 2018 published by the National Bureau of Statistics on February 28, 2019.
According to the communique, by the end of 2018, China had 2,075 performance troupes, 3,331 museums, 3,326 cultural centers, and 3,173 public libraries with a total of 845,29 million visits.
The communique also said that in 2018, China published 34 billion issues of newspapers, 2.4 issues of periodicals, 9.5 billion books, with the average numbers of books owned by people reaching 6.85. By year end China has 4,210 archive centers with 140.16 million archive documents open to the public.
According to the communique, investments in the fixed assets in the cultural, sports and entertainment industries has witnessed a 21.2 percent growth year on year in 2018, the largest growth among all industries. The annual consumer price index grew 2.1 percent from 2017, with a 2.2 percent growth in the education, cultural and entertainment sector. The average expenditure on education, culture and entertainment reached 2,226 per capita, up 11.2 percent from 2017, and also the fourth biggest amount of expenditure following food, housing and transport.