The Eighth China (Beijing) Reading Season Campaign is officially launched at Zhongguancun Software Park in Beijing on April 23, the World Book Day. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The Eighth China (Beijing) Reading Season Campaign was officially launched at Zhongguancun Software Park in Beijing on April 23, the World Book Day.

The World Book Day is a yearly event organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright.

The civil reading campaign aims to enrich people's cultural lives, strengthen the cultural inheritance of the city, and accelerate the construction of a scholar-gentry city, providing strong support for Beijing to build a national cultural center.

Yu Jun, Party secretary of Haidian district committee, said that the district will focus on creating a cultural atmosphere for local people and promote people's cultural awareness.

Yu Jun, Party secretary of Haidian district committee, gives a speech at the launching ceremony of the Eighth China (Beijing) Reading Season Campaign on April 23. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

According to Du Fei, head of Beijing Municipal Publicity Department, Beijing is now pushing ahead the construction of the country's cultural center and hopes that reading can become a lifestyle for the citizens.

In recent years, Haidian district has attached great importance to civil reading, and it has invested one billion yuan ($160 million) to build an 88,000-square-meter cultural center, boasting the city's largest district-level library, and reaching over 1.3 million visitors since 2016.

Since 2016, the number of people participating in the reading campaign has risen from 1.07 million to more than two million this year, and the government support funds have also risen from 2.2 million yuan to 8.8 million yuan this year, which has made the campaign become Haidian's cultural brand.