Beijing, Sep 28 (IANS): China has completed a cultural project aimed at building at least one reading room for people in every village in the country.

At the end of August, China had invested over 18 billion yuan (around $2.8 billion) in the construction of 600,449 upto-standard reading rooms in rural areas, Xinhua reported.

The rooms have 940 million books, 540 million copies of newspapers and 120 million copies of audio and video products, according to a government document.

Some of the reading rooms have been equipped with film projectors.

Officials said the reading room project serves the country's efforts to close cultural gaps between urban and rural areas, provide people with equal access to public cultural services and ensure rural people's basic cultural rights.

The project would also act as an important platform for lifting the scientific and cultural literacy of people living in rural areas.

The reading room project was first tried out in the western regions of Gansu and Guizhou in 2005, and was expanded on a national scale starting 2007.