Guangzhou held a conference on Sept 8 to promote and develop its Cantonese culture.

Guangzhou has made solid progress in the revision of the protection plan for the famous historical and cultural city in Guangzhou. It has issued and implemented the development plan for the Lingnan cultural center, as well as completed the transformation of historical and cultural blocks in six major areas, including Beijing Road. It has also included 26 historical and cultural blocks on the Guangdong provincial cultural protection list.

As an ancient city with a history of more than 2,000 years, Guangzhou attaches great importance to strengthening the systematic protection of important cultural and natural heritage and intangible cultural heritage items, with 116 representative projects of intangible heritage items in the city. Among them, there are two world-level and 21 national-level items, ranking first in the province.

Recently, Guangzhou Changlong Tourist Resort and Guangzhou Canton Tower Tourist Area were selected for the second batch of national nighttime culture and tourism consumption clusters.

Last year, Guangzhou's cultural industry achieved an added value of about 173 billion yuan ($25 billion), a year-on-year increase of 12.6 percent, accounting for about 6.2 percent of the city's GDP. In the first half of this year, Guangzhou's cultural and related industries above the designated size achieved an operating income of 222.25 billion yuan.

Guangzhou's 16 new cultural industries, represented by multimedia, animation games, digital publishing software development, internet advertising services, and internet search services, have grown rapidly. In the first half of the year, the operating income of these industries was 103.09 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7 percent. In addition, the city is continuing to deepen the integration of technology and culture.

The new Guangzhou Art Gallery. [Photo/WeChat account: gzhzfb]