Chinese central and local governments have poured money into the building of a national cultural information and resources sharing network, deemed as the base for the country's public cultural service system, the Ministry of Culture said Monday.

The central government has planned to invest 2.476 billion yuan ($362.6 million) in the project during the country's 11th five-year (2006-2010) plan, among which 2.07 billion yuan ($303 million) has been allocated so far, according to the ministry.

The total investment from local governments has reached 2.7 billion yuan ($395 million). One national service center has been established, along with 33 provincial-level centers and nearly 3,000 county-level branch centers, according to the ministry.

Initiated in 2002, the project was committed to digitizing domestic cultural resources and sharing them nationwide via Internet, satellite transmission and discs.

Vice Minister of Culture Zhou Heping said Monday that the project has made new progress as local governments kept innovating in ways of transmission.

The project has extended to a population of 50 million people, according to Zhou.

The ministry on Monday also launched a promotion scheme of county-level digital libraries, aiming at transmitting resources from the National Digital Library to nationwide county-level libraries via the cultural information and resources sharing network.

The plan would be implemented in 320 counties ahead of the two-week-away Spring Festival, while by the end of this year, a total of 2,940 counties across the country would have libraries with digital library services, the ministry said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 2, 2010)