SHENZHEN would apply for the title of World Book Capital City of UNESCO in the next few years, according to a 10-year (2011-2020) guideline unveiled at the launching ceremony of the city s 10th Reading Month on Monday.
City Party chief Wang Rong and a number of senior officials attended the ceremony where there was an exhibition of city development in relation to books over the past three decades, the Daily Sunshine said yesterday. But the guideline didn t elaborate the time of the application.
The paper said this year s campaign aimed to promote reading in daily life. Reading an hour a day will be a focus of the campaign, which was initiated in 2000.
The campaign started with a mission to provide an ideal reading environment for city residents, especially the large number of young migrant workers who had limited access to books, an official with the campaign organizing committee told the Daily.
The official who wasn t named by the paper said that so far four donations of books worth more than 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million) had been made to Book Houses for Young Workers and Project Hope schools in other less-developed cities and areas. Another 20 Book Houses for Young Workers will be set up this month to promote reading for young migrants, he said.
According to the organizing committee, more than 1,900 activities had been held during the Reading Month in the past nine years, involving nearly 56 million people.
The paper said the annual monthlong campaign had become a name tag for Shenzhen, which was called cultural wasteland by other cities.
Under the 10-year guidelines, the city aims to have at least 75 percent of the total population reading at least one hour a day, paving the way for the World Book Capital City application.
The World Book Capital City was initiated by UNESCO in November 2001 based on the positive experience of World Book and Copyright Day, launched in 1996. Madrid, Spain, was nominated the first World Book Capital City for the year 2001. The nomination does not imply a monetary prize, but an exclusively symbolic acknowledgement of the best program dedicated to books and reading.
Ljubljana in Slovenia was nominated World Book Capital City 2010 and Buenos Aires, Argentina, World Book Capital City 2011.
(SD News)
