China supports and encourages its ethnic minorities to inherit and carry forward their traditional culture, says a white paper on China's human rights progress in 2004 issued Wednesday by the Information Office of the State Council.

The white paper says that China supports organs of self- government of autonomous areas to independently develop cultural undertakings in ethnic languages and with ethnic characteristics, including literature, art, news, publishing, broadcasting, movies and television programs.

According to the white paper, China has established a national ethnic-minority ancient books publishing planning team to sort out ancient books of ethnic minorities.

At present, institutions for the editing of and research in ancient books of ethnic minorities have been established in 25 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government, 130 autonomous prefectures and leagues across the country.

These institutions have collected 120,000 titles of ancient books of ethnic minorities and published over 5,000 of them, the white paper says.

By the end of 2004, China had 30 world heritage sites including cultural, natural sites and the mixed. Two of the cultural heritage sites, namely, the Potala Palace in Lhasa and the Old Town of Lijiang, and three of the natural heritage sites, namely, Jiuzhaigou Scenic and Historic Interest Area, Huanglong Scenic and Historic Interest Area and the Three Parallel Rivers scenic spot, are located in ethnic autonomous areas.

In addition, the Dongba classical documents of the Naxi ethnic group are included in the World Memory Heritage List, the white paper says.

It says that a National Traditional Ethnic Minority Sports Meet is held every four years. The development of the traditional medicine of the ethnic groups is thriving.

At present, Tibet produces 293 kinds of Tibetan medicine, with an annual output of over 1,500 tons. Tibetan ready-made medicine has found its way to the national public medicare market. The total annual output value of Tibetan medicine producers is more than 450 million yuan (54 million US dollars).