Chinese officials, officials from ASEAN countries as well as business leaders on Saturday vowed to increase cultural exchanges between China and Southeast Asian countries as China-ASEAN trade and investment continue to boom.

Wu Shulin, deputy head of the General Administration of Press and Publication of China, said China and ASEAN countries, which have a lot in common in culture, should make joint efforts to further promote exchanges and cooperation on culture, including publication.

Wu made the remarks while attending the first China-ASEAN Publishing Expo, part of the Eighth China-ASEAN Expo held in Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

He hailed the current cooperation between Chinese and ASEAN publishing circles. Three sessions of the Chinese Book Fair and Copyright Trade Fair, sponsored by the administration, have been held in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia since 2008, greatly boosting exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and ASEAN publishing circles, he said.

Li Kang, deputy governor of Guangxi, said cultural exchanges and cooperation, an indispensable part of all-round China-ASEAN cooperation, will greatly help improve China-ASEAN economic and trade ties.

Li said as the economy develops rapidly, Guangxi has attached great importance to cultural development.

Guangxi's culture industry will hit 100 billion ($15.67 billion) by 2015, accounting for 5 percent of the region's gross domestic product, according to its five-year plan. Guangxi, with the largest population of ethnic groups in China, will focus on some key sectors - publication, movies, TV and comic and animation, cultural expos, innovative design and advertisements, arts and performance, and the Internet and games - to develop its culture industry.

With an eye to developing cultural ties with its Southeast Asian neighbors, Guangxi is planning to build the Guangxi Publishing Industrial Zone with funds and policy support from the central government. The zone, with an area of 2,000 mu (133 hectares) in its first phase, includes the China-ASEAN cultural products logistics area, the China-ASEAN talent base for culture industry, the China-ASEAN digital publishing base and the China-ASEAN innovative printing area.

Soe Win,deputy minister of information of Myanmar, promised to enhance media cooperation, including printing and publishing between China and Myanmar.

"Thanks to the enhanced media cooperation, people of our countries will know more about one another leading toward further development of country-to-country and people-to-people amity and understanding between ASEAN and China," Soe said.

China's publishing industry needs to speed up reform aimed at establishing a modern enterprise system using modern digital technology in order to sharpen their competitive edge in cooperation and competition with their foreign counterparts, said Chen Zekui, deputy general manager of the well-known Readers Publishing Group, based in Northwest China’s Gansu province.

"The publishing circle from China and ASEAN countries should seize opportunities from the China-ASEAN Expo and the China-ASEAN free-trade area to promote publication exchanges and cooperation," Chen said.