China cultural industry expands faster in 2016

BEIJING - China's cultural industry saw more rapid growth last year, thanks, in part, to a boom in information transmission services, official data showed Monday.

The sector's combined revenue amounted to 8.03 trillion yuan ($1.17 trillion) in 2016, up 7.5 percent from a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said in a statement. The growth rate was higher than the 6.9 percent achieved in 2015.

The NBS tracks some 50,000 companies across 10 cultural sectors -- six that offer cultural services and four involved in the manufacturing of cultural products.

Cultural services saw robust growth. The revenue from information transmission services increased the most by 30.03 percent year on year, followed by cultural and artistic services, and recreation and entertainment services.

Manufacturing of cultural products, although slowing, still accounted for nearly two thirds of the sector's total revenue.

The country's eastern regions contributed 74.4 percent to the overall cultural revenue in 2016.