Xi'an promotes reading campaign

Xi'an has formulated its development plans for the city's culture and tourism during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–30), providing policy support for promoting the high-quality development of public cultural services.

Funding guarantees for the construction of the public cultural service system have been increased. To encourage municipal public libraries to upgrade and advance the development of new cultural spaces, financial incentives and subsidies will be granted to urban reading rooms in all districts, counties, and development zones that meet the required construction standards.

For infrastructure projects including new library construction, renovation, and equipment renewal, subsidies will be allocated based on the total amount of investment.

Efforts have been made to implement free admission and extended opening hours. Corresponding annual funding subsidies will be provided to all public libraries and cultural stations in the city that are open free to the public. The capacity for service supply has also been improved, guiding cultural venues to open at extended and staggered hours.

These measures have effectively promoted the high-quality development of the city's public service system, and provided convenient and efficient cultural products and services for the public.

In January 2025, Xi'an Youth Activity Center (Children's Library), covering a construction area of 13,000 square meters with a collection of 200,000 books, opened to the public. Equipped with 500 reading seats, it served a total of 680,000 readers in its first year of operation, putting an end to Xi'an's history of having no municipal-level library for children.

To date, the city has built 16 public libraries, 185 township (sub-district) cultural stations, and 2,797 village (community) grassroots comprehensive cultural service centers, all equipped with reading rooms. A total of 108 urban reading rooms are located at street corners across the city, providing 24-hour self-service registration, inquiry, borrowing, and returning services, extending reading services to the community level. An additional 60 such reading rooms will be built in the next three years.

The establishment of the central-branch library system at the county level has been steadily advanced, with 13 central libraries and 88 branches (including service outlets) established. All branches have implemented unified library card registration and mutual borrowing and returning among libraries, thus enriching the basic public cultural services available to the people and making access more convenient.

Xi'an launched a series of events on April 23 for the World Book and Copyright Day and Xi'an Reading Month, including 10 key activities and 325 sub-events. These offerings will enrich the cultural life of the public and create a new urban image of citywide reading participation.