The Poster News APP:

China's urbanization has been developing rapidly since the 18th CPC National Congress. What achievements have been made in the integrated development of urban and rural public cultural services during this process? What role has it played in strengthening people's sense of gain from culture? Thank you.

Rao Quan:

Public cultural services are closely related to people's lives. Mr. Chen Binbin from the Public Service Department will answer this question.

Chen Binbin: 

Thank you for your question. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, we have implemented in full the guiding principles embodied in General Secretary Xi Jinping's speeches concerning public culture and followed the decisions and arrangements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council. We have redoubled our efforts to promote the integrated development of urban and rural public cultural services, focusing on providing standardized essential public cultural services for urban and rural residents. As a result, equal access to essential public cultural services has significantly improved. People's sense of gain from culture is becoming increasingly more robust, which can be demonstrated in the following four aspects:

First, the institutional system has been refined. Over the last decade, we have rolled out and implemented two laws and one standard. The two laws refer to the Law on the Protection of Public Cultural Services and the Law on Public Libraries. The one standard refers to the national standards to guide the provision of basic public cultural services. At the same time, we have seen that the 31 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities have worked out standards for providing basic public cultural services. Moreover, 333 prefecture-level cities and 2,846 counties have issued catalogs of essential public cultural services, and the Opinions on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Public Cultural Services has been promulgated. These laws, standards, and policies ensure that we can support the integrated development of public cultural services in both urban and rural areas.

Second, the system of facilities has been improved. Over the decade, the facilities network for public cultural services at the grassroots level has been expanded and improved through deepening reforms. We have advanced the development of facilities for public cultural services at the grassroots level by establishing county-level cultural centers and adopting the central-branch system for libraries. Ten years ago, we mainly relied on the system of service facilities, comprising over 6,000 cultural centers and libraries. Today, we have developed a facilities network for public cultural services at the grassroots level, including 95,000 libraries and service station branches. We have also made good use of social resources to push for the building of new public cultural spaces such as the "City Study Room" and "Cultural Station," which reached 18,000 spaces recently and are growing rapidly. These cultural facilities and spaces are built close to people's' homes. They are accessible and usable and greatly facilitate the cultural lives of the people, improving the convenience and effectiveness of public cultural services.

Third, people have enjoyed a greater variety of cultural activities. With the improvement of living standards, people have increasingly stronger needs for cultural life and activities. To meet these needs, we have actively launched mass cultural activities. developing such brand activities as the "Village Gala" in rural areas, "singing together," and the "square dance," with the number of participants continuing to hit new records. For example, over 118 million people participated in the national "Village Gala" demonstration activity held in 2022. When people engage in cultural activities, they are not only willing to be spectators but also willing to be actors or creators. Therefore, people have become the real subject of culture. We have enhanced the development of mass cultural groups. According to the latest data, the number of such groups has exceeded 450,000, up 50% from 2021.

Fourth, cultural resources have been made available at the primary level. Over the past decade, we have promoted the extension of quality cultural resources from cities to rural areas through standardization and cultural projects and made leapfrog progress in developing public cultural systems in poor areas, border areas with mainly ethnic minority populations, and old revolutionary base areas. For example, we have implemented a cultural talent support program in the above-mentioned areas. Over the past decade, we have dispatched a total of 169,000 cultural workers to primary-level cultural institutions and trained more than 15,000 cultural workers there. As operas are very popular in the rural areas, we have implemented a program to bring more operas to the countryside in recent years. Under the program, 78,000 opera performances are staged in 13,000 towns and townships in the central and western regions each year. Over the past decade, we have also carried out the digital library project and a cultural information resource sharing project, sending a large amount of quality digital resources to the primary level. Now, all the libraries in prefecture-level cities and 99% of county-level libraries across China, even in the most remote places, can provide digital resources amounting to 145 TB, including 300,000 e-books, over 7,700 types of periodicals, and 200,000 types of audio media.

Going forward, we will continue to promote quality development and provide higher quality, more efficient, fairer, and more sustainable public cultural services to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of all people. Thank you.

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