Ministry of Culture (China)

The Ministry of Culture (MOC) was a ministry of the government of the People's Republic of China which was dissolved on 19 March 2018. The responsibilities of the MOC, which were assumed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, encompassed cultural policy and activities in the country, including managing national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts (including censorship of visual, folk, theatrical, musical, dance, architectural, literary, televisual and cinematographic works); and managing the national archives and regional culture centers. Its headquarters were in Chaoyang District, Beijing.

Duties
In 1955, the Ministry of Culture sought to develop rural cultural networks to distribute media like other performances, lantern slides, books, cinema, radio, books, and to establish newspaper reading groups.

On March 9, 1958, the Ministry of Culture held a meeting to introduce a Great Leap Forward in cinema. During the Great Leap Forward, the film industry rapidly expanded, with documentary films being the genre that experienced the greatest growth. The number of film-screening venues, including both urban cinemas and mobile projectionist units that traveled through rural China, also radically increased during the this period.

During the Cultural Revolution, in 1970 the communist party deemed the cultural politics of the ministry so disruptive that it was dissolved and a Culture Group was established within the State Council.

In 1998, the Ministry of Culture revived the practice of mobile rural cinema as part of its 2131 Project which aimed to screen one movie pert month per village in rural China and upgrade analog equipment to digital projectors.

The duty of the ministry was to digitize and preserve public domain works, and make them available and accessible to every citizen. China had millions of public domain works, including but not limited to books, pictures, music and films.