Culture

At the end of 2005, there were 2,577 performing troupes, 2,868 culture centers, 2,736 public libraries, 1,556 museums, 273 radio broadcasting stations, 302 television stations and 50 educational television stations throughout China. Subscribers to cable television programs and digital cable television services numbered 125.69 million and 4.13 million, respectively. Radio broadcasting and television broadcasting coverage rates were 94.5 percent and 95.8 percent, respectively. The country produced 260 feature movies, 42 science, educational, documentary and cartoon movies and 14 special movies in the year. A total of 40.4 billion copies of newspapers and 2.75 billion copies of magazines were issued, and 6.4 billion copies of books published. There were 4,012 archives and 60.16 million documents were made accessible to the public.

Development of the Internet Service

According to the China Internet Network Information Center, till the end of 2005, IP addresses on the Chinese mainland totaled 74.39 million and the number of netizens soared to 111 million, 17 million more than the previous year, representing a growth rate of 18.1 percent. China’s online community made up 8.5 percent of the total population, with 84.8 percent of Internet users having junior college education or above and 1.8 percent, a high school degree. Students accounted for 35.1 percent of all netizens, enterprise employees for 29.6 percent, teachers and other administrative staff for 7.3 percent, public servants for 6.6 percent, employees of public service units for 6.5 percent, and others for less than 5 percent.

A total of 64.3 million had broadband access, 21.5 million more than the previous year. The average browsing time was 15.9 hours per week, which is 2.7 hours or 20.5 percent more year on year. The most frequent activities were browsing news, searching for materials through search engines and e-mailing. The average netizen paid 103.6 yuan each month for Internet connection, not including the expenses for online services. Online service charges exceeded 100 billion yuan in 2005, reflecting this sector’s huge market potential.

Cultural Heritage Protection

The State Council has designated the second Saturday of each June from 2006 as the Day of Cultural Heritage. The first such day fell on June 10, 2006 and had the theme "protecting cultural heritage and maintaining spiritual habitat." National and local authorities of culture and heritage protection held various activities on that day. The sixth list of key state-level cultural heritage sites and the first list of state-level masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage were also issued that day.

The verification of the first batch of state-level masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage progressed smoothly. Till February 2006, 501 candidates had been identified. They were selected from 1,315 entries, in the 10 categories of folk literature, music, dance, drama, folk ballad, acrobatics and sports, fine arts, handicraft, traditional Chinese medicine and folk custom, which were recommended by the departments concerned of 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.