About every 200,000 people now have a museum in Shanghai, which is twice the Chinese national average. [Photo: thepaper.cn]

About every 200,000 people now have a museum in Shanghai, which is twice the Chinese national average, said Hu Jinjun, an official from the Communist Party of China Shanghai Committee.

In the 13th Five-Year Plan period between 2016 and 2020, Shanghai will learn from other multicultural cities and build more museums, galleries and theatres that meet international standards in the city's downtown area.

Shanghai will construct and rebuild a total of 29 public cultural facilities with an investment of 15.42 billion yuan, or 2.34 billion US dollars, in the 13th Five-Year Plan period. The projects include the Shanghai Opera House, the World Expo Museum, the Shanghai Planetarium and so on.

During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, Shanghai had a total of 30 major cultural facilities under construction. The city's public cultural infrastructures covered an area of around 3.12 million square meters. There were 121 museums in the city, including memorials and exhibition halls, and 238 public libraries.