BEIJING, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- The press and publishing industry in Tibet is flourishing, said a white paper titled "Protection and Development of Tibetan Culture" issued on Thursday.

    Old Tibet had no publishing houses in the modern sense, apart from a few workshops for printing Buddhist sutras using printing blocks, the paper said.

    Now, Tibet has two publishing houses for books, and two for audio-visual products. Some 250 million volumes of over 11,300 titles, written in the Tibetan or Chinese language, have been published, including 3,000 Tibetan-language titles, of which 200 titles have won national awards, it said.

    There has been a 20-percent annual increase in the production of Tibetan-language books for five consecutive years.

    Since its establishment in 1989, the Tibet Audio-Visual Publishing House has put out more than 100 audio-visual and electronic publications and distributed over 330,000 audio and visual products.

    There has been a 13-percent annual increase in the production of audio-visual products for five consecutive years, according to the paper.

    Currently, Tibet has 35 printing houses of various types, widely applying such new technologies as electronic typesetting, off-set lithography, electronic color separation and multi-color printing. A book distribution network has covered the entire region, it said.

    In 2002-2007 alone, 10.08 million yuan had been invested in building or expanding 35 Xinhua Bookstores, bringing the total number of these shops to 67.

    There are now 272 distribution units that distribute more than 40 million books of over 200,000 titles every year. Moreover, the region has invested over 18 million yuan to build a new logistics distribution center, each day distributing 560,000 copies (discs) of books, newspapers, audio-visual and electronic publications of 50,000 titles, figures from the paper showed.

    Old Tibet had only one lithographically printed newspaper in the Tibetan language in the last years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), titled The Tibet Vernacular Newspaper, and its print-run was fewer than 100 copies a day.

    Now, Tibet has 57 openly distributed newspapers and periodicals-- 23 newspapers and 34 periodicals. Each of Tibet's seven prefectures and cities has a Tibetan newspaper and Han Chinese newspaper, the paper said.

    In 2007, Tibet published 55.50 million copies of newspapers and2.67 million copies of periodicals, both boasting a double-digit growth for five years in a run. Magazines such as Tibetan Studies and Tibet Travels have won national magazine award nominations andkey social science magazine awards, according to the paper.

    No radio, film or TV industry existed in old Tibet. Over the 50-odd years since the peaceful liberation of Tibet, the central and regional finance together allocated 1.2 billion yuan for the development of Tibet's radio, film and TV industry.

    Relevant departments in the central government as well as other provinces have also rendered great support to Tibet in technology, personnel, materials and equipment, helping to train a large number of professionals for it.

    In 2007, Tibet had nine broadcast and radio stations, 39 medium-wave transmitting stations, 76 FM radio transmitting and relay stations of 100 watts or above, 80 TV transmitting stations of 50 watts or above, 76 cable TV transmitting stations above the county level, and 9,111 radio and TV stations at the township and village levels.

    All these have made radio and TV coverage rates in Tibet reach 87.8 percent and 88.9 percent, respectively, achieving the target of extending broadcast and TV coverage to each administrative village, it said.

    New media forms, such as the Internet and mobile phones, have quickly developed as a new force in terms of their popularization and applications.

    Tibet started its Internet construction in 1997, achieved broadband Internet access in 1999, and created its first website -- "Window on Tibet" -- in 2000.

    At the end of 2007, Tibet had 760 websites, 82,858 Internet subscribers and some 200,000 netizens, accounting for six percent of the total population of Tibet.

    Mobile phone services were launched in Tibet in August 1993, with a switchboard capacity for only 4,500 mobile subscribers, as well as only one base station. Now, Tibet has over 8,300 base stations and 800,000 mobile phone subscribers.

    New media have become major channels enabling the Tibetan people to keep up with current events, and have rapid access to information as well as leisure and amusement.

    These media have enriched the local people's spiritual and cultural lives and brought Tibet closer to the rest of the world, the paper noted.