BEIJING, May 25 (Xinhua) -- China attaches importance to the collection and protection of cultural relics and materials including those relating to the period of Cultural Revolution from1966 to 1976, Minister of Culture Sun Jiazheng said here Thursday.

    At a press conference of the Information Office of the State Council, Sun said a host of data and records relating to the Cultural Revolution have been lost and spread all over the world.

    In reply to a question from foreign media, Sun said the National Museum, the National Library and other museums in China have collected a wealth of cultural relics and materials relating to the Cultural Revolution, which will be conducive to further researches on this period of history, Sun acknowledged.

    This month marks the 40 anniversary of the launch of the tumultuous ten-year Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China.

    The Cultural Revolution, a political storm, unprecedented in scale and scope, broke out in 1966, when the China had just fulfilled the tasks of readjusting the national economy and set inmotion the Third Five-Year Plan for National Economic Development.

    This so called "revolution," wrongly launched by the top leader, and made use of by two counter revolutionary cliques, turned out to be an internal turmoil that caused calamities to the Communist Party of China, the state and the people.

    It disrupted the country's socialist construction, and made new China suffer the greatest setbacks and losses ever since its founding in 1949. Enditem