China's culture industry output grows 16.5%

China's culture industry output rose 16.5 percent year on year to 1.81 trillion yuan (296 billion U.S. dollars) in 2012, making up 3.48 percent of the country's GDP, according to data Monday. The proportion was 0.2 percentage point higher than that in the previous year, the National Bureau of Statistics said. China aims to foster the industry into a new growth source and has a goal to make cultural value-added output account for 5 percent of GDP in 2016, according to the Ministry of Culture. It has put emphasis on developing the markets of books, newspapers, magazines, digital audio and video publications, performing arts, television series, movies and cartoons, with support from bank loans, government spending, taxation and land use. NBS figures also showed that the structure of culture sector remained stable in 2012, recording no big changes from the previous year. The value-added output of goods producers, goods sellers and service providers accounted for 40.1 percent, 6.6 percent and 53.3 percent of the sector's total respectively in 2012, the bureau said.