BEIJING - China's cultural industry maintained its steady expansion in 2024, with new business models continuing to flourish, official data showed Monday.

The surveyed 78,000 enterprises in the sector generated a combined revenue of 14.15 trillion yuan (about $1.97 trillion) last year, up 6 percent from 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

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Zhang Peng, an NBS senior statistician, said this resulted from the government's efforts to optimize the supply of cultural services and products while promoting the development of cultural and tourism sectors.

The profits of these firms expanded 10.8 percent year-on-year to 1.29 trillion yuan. Zhang said that digital content services, internet information services, and internet cultural and entertainment platforms were the key drivers of the profit growth.

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Emerging business models in the cultural industry continued to build resiliency, with their combined revenue rising 9.8 percent from a year ago to 5.91 trillion yuan, contributing 65.7 percent to the sector's overall revenue increase, according to Zhang.