China's cultural industry predicted to become a pillar of the economy by 2016

China's Minister of Culture Cai Wu expects value-added output of the cultural industry to account for 5 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016. Cai made the remark during a recent interview with Xinhua. The interview came after a plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which concluded Tuesday, adopted a landmark resolution on boosting cultural system reform and cultural industry development. The total value-added output of the cultural industry across China in 2010 amounted to more than 1.1 trillion yuan (around 172.95 billion U.S. dollars), or about 2.78 percent of the country's GDP, according to Cai. To foster the building of cultural industry into a pillar of the national economy, Cai said, China needs to deepen the reform of government-run for-profit cultural organizations, by introducing market-oriented modern corporate system. "The goal of reform is to cultivate qualified market entities from the government-run commercial cultural organizations and establish a modern and influential cultural industry system," Cai said. "So as to guard the role of state-run cultural enterprises as market leader and improve their international competitiveness." Urging for an improved modern cultural market system, Cai said emphasis must be placed on the development of markets of books, newspapers and magazines, digital audio and video publications, performing, entertainment, TV series and movies, and cartoons.