China's cultural industry has witnessed robust growth last year, thanks to a boom in mobile services, according to Chinese official data. 

In a statement of the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday, the sector's combined revenue amounted to 8.03 trillion yuan (1.17 trillion US dollars) in 2016, up 7.5 percent from a year ago, and higher than the 6.9 percent achieved in 2015. 

The NBS has tracked around 50,000 companies across 10 cultural sectors, and six offer cultural services and four involved in the manufacture of cultural products. 

The revenue from mobile services increased the most at 30.03 percent year-on-year, followed by cultural and recreation services. 

Cultural product manufacturing accounted for nearly two thirds of the sector's total revenue, despite a slow pace of growth. 

The country's eastern regions contributed 74.4 percent to overall cultural revenue in 2016. 

According to international organizations, like UNESCO and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, cultural industries or creative industries combine in the creation, production, and distribution of goods and services that are cultural in nature and usually protected by intellectual property rights. 

(With input from Xinhua)