Cultural undertakings continued to develop and the people's cultural life continued to improve. By November 2004, the nationalcultural information sharing project had 32 provincial sub-centers,nearly 3,000 grass-roots centers and over 50,000 terminal users. By the end of 2004, the country had 2,599 art troupes, 2,858 cultural centers, 2,710 public libraries, 1,509 museums, 282 radiostations, and 314 TV stations with 60 education channels. There were about 115 million cable TV users, and 30 cities with cable digital TV services for 1.22 million users. The overall populationcoverage rates of radio and TV broadcasting were 94.1 percent and 95.3 percent, respectively. In 2004, 212 feature films and 44 films on science and education, documentaries and animated cartoons were produced. In the same year, 25.77 billion copies of national and provincial newspapers, 2.69 billion copies of periodicals of various kinds and 6.44 billion copies of books werepublished. A relatively complete public cultural service system had taken initial shape, and the people's basic cultural rights were protected.

    The government has adopted measures to improve the farmers' cultural, scientific and technological qualities, enhance their ability to increase their incomes, and improve their production and living conditions. In 2004, the government arranged 1,692 projects under the Spark Program, in which agricultural produce processing projects accounted for 33.1 percent, projects for the development of advantageous resources and characteristic industries in rural areas accounted for 13.89 percent, and high-efficiency cultivation and breeding projects accounted for 24.7 percent. Over 3.10 million were trained in different skills for rural enterprises, 236 rural enterprises received support to set up state-level centers for technological innovations, and over 1,500 state-level intermediary agencies of all kinds were established to provide science and technology services in rural areas. So far, 143,400 Spark Program demonstration projects have been implemented, involving nearly 90 percent of the counties and cities throughout the country. In recent years, the state has invested 10.3 billion yuan to solve the drinking water problem forover 60 million rural people. In 2004, 1.8 billion yuan was arranged in the form of treasury bonds for investment in projects to make drinking water available to people and domestic animals inrural areas, which helped solve the problem of safe drinking waterfor 9.58 million people in the countryside. The "2005-2006 Emergency Plan for Drinking Water Projects in Rural Areas" was worked out, which was expected to solve the drinking water problemfor 21.20 million rural residents. Meanwhile, 2 billion yuan worthof treasury bonds was issued for investment in the construction ofmarsh gas facilities, which would provide marsh gas for 2.07 million rural households. A project for the construction of pastoral steppes and settlement of nomads in Tibet was carried outcontinuously, which received accumulatively 180 million yuan by 2004 and, when completed in 2006, it would settle 8,000 nomad families totaling 40,000 people. Some 6.4 billion yuan of work-for-food funds was appropriated to construct 1.85 million mu (15 mu equals to 1 ha) of basic farmland, add and improve 9.70 million muof irrigated areas, build, renovate and extend 40,000 km of highways, and prevent and control soil erosion in an area of 0.155million sq km.

     The government attaches great importance to the protection of the farmers' legitimate rights and interests. In 2004, the government examined compensation for and settlement of farmers whose collectively-owned lands had been requisitioned, and paid defaulted compensation for land requisition totaling 14.77 billionyuan. The government sorted out and annulled discriminative regulations and unreasonable restrictions on farmers seeking employment in urban areas, and continued to improve protection of the legitimate rights and interests of migrant workers from rural areas, requiring that their children should enjoy equal rights to compulsory education with local children, forbidding arbitrary collection of fees from them, improving job services for them, providing them with good consultation services, strengthening their training for employment, further solving their problem of defaulted wages, reinforcing the management of labor contracts as well as procuratorial work and law enforcement concerning labor security, handling promptly labor dispute cases, encouraging tradeunions to protect their rights and interests according to law, andproviding them with industrial injury insurance. In 2004, the "Provisional Measures for the Management of Payment of Wages to Migrant Construction Workers from Rural Areas" was formulated, which provided for an overall clear-up of defaults on payment of project fees as well as wages of migrant workers from rural areas.By the end of 2004, migrant construction workers from rural areas received wages totaling 33.2 billion yuan defaulted accumulativelyover the previous years.