NANJING — The number of visitors to Chinese museums across China increased by over 100 million visitors year-on-year to reach 1.23 billion in 2019, said Liu Yuzhu, head of the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA), at the opening ceremony of the International Museum Day celebrations in China on May 18.

The number of museums in China increased by 181 year-on-year to 5,535 in 2019 and they held about 28,600 exhibitions and 334,600 educational events in 2019, Liu said in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu province, the main venue for the celebrations.

"Equality has become a distinctive characteristic of the development of Chinese museums, while innovation has accelerated their modernization and intellectualization," Liu said.

Themed "Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion," this year's campaign for International Museum Day will include special activities held across China to boost interactions between museums and the public, according to the NCHA.

In collaboration with Xinhua News Agency, the NCHA launched a platform to show the best of the online exhibitions of China's museums at the opening ceremony.

A special exhibition with a selection of over 200 cultural relics dating from the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) and the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) to the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) were jointly launched by eight cultural institutions as the first livestream project under the cooperation.

In a tribute to medics, a batch of materials demonstrating China's collective efforts in the combat against the epidemic was donated to Nanjing Museum at the opening ceremony of the main event.

Online activities will be intertwined with offline events for the first time due to the epidemic, and activities at the main event venue will be livestreamed via the 5G network.

A total of 11 Chinese cities including Chongqing, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Changsha have hosted the main event in turn since 2009.