China on Saturday opened up 921 cultural projects with a total value of about 70 billion yuan (8.75 billion U.S. dollars) in a hope to draw investment from both home and abroad.

The projects cover seven fields, such as publishing, movie and TV, entertainment, industrial arts and cultural tourism, involving 20 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.

They are listed in a handbook for investing in the cultural sector, the first of its kind in China, which was issued by the Ministry of Culture at an ongoing international cultural expo held in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.

China has been facing a dilemma in that many cultural projects receive no investment, according to Wang Yongzhang, director of the Cultural Industry Department with the Ministry of Culture.

"We hope every investor who is interested in the Chinese cultural industry can find an appropriate project in this handbook, thus pushing development of this industry," he said.

The four-day expo that kicked off on Thursday was jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, State Administration of Press and Publications and the governments of Guangdong and Shenzhen.

It aims to demonstrate the progress of China's culture industry in recent years and facilitate exchanges and investment activities between China's and the world's cultural circles.

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

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

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