An international cultural expo opened Thursday in Shenzhen, a booming city in southern China's Guangdong Province, with the aim of promoting Chinese cultural products and services to the world market.

Activities during the four-day expo include exhibitions, trade fairs, and seminars on artistic design, media technology, publication, education, auctions and performances by international artists.

More than 1,500 Chinese enterprises, 26 delegations from Australia, South Korea, Japan and a number of other countries, and some 21,000 participants from cultural circles, will attend the expo.

The expo, jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, State Administration of Press and Publications and the governments of Guangdong and Shenzhen, will demonstrate the progress of China's culture industry in recent years and facilitate exchanges and investment activities between China's and world cultural circles, officials attending the opening ceremony said.

This is the second such expo, the first was held in November 2004.

(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2006)