China is trying to improve the role of the country's more than 2,400 museums to make them more accessible to the public, according to an ongoing national conference attended by directors of provincial cultural relics departments

The museums, which are sponsored by the government, institutions or individuals, hold nearly 10,000 exhibitions on different themes annually. In all, they received about 150 million visitors each year.

A big boost, thanks to government efforts, is that more and more Chinese museums have stopped its long-time practice of selling tickets to visitors.

Increasingly, critics had complained that the expensive charges collected by educational and cultural institutions had become a big financial burden on Chinese families.

To date, more than 1,000 museums and memorial institutions have been officially made educational bases for patriotism and popular science. They received 32 million underage visitors annually.

(Xinhua News Agency December 23, 2007)