BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- China's cultural industry maintained steady revenue growth in the first half of 2018, boosted by strong gains by news and information service providers, data showed Tuesday.

Combined revenue of the sector's major companies, whose annual revenue was five million yuan (about 733,500 U.S. dollars) or above, reached 4.22 trillion yuan during the January-June period, up 9.9 percent year on year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The growth was 0.6 percentage points lower than the first quarter of this year and 1.8 percentage points lower than the same period of last year.

In breakdown, revenue from news and information services increased the most in H1, up by 29.4 percent from one year earlier, followed by advertising and design as well as content producers such as publishing houses and online games, which rose 15.1 percent and 11.9 percent, respectively.

The NBS data came from a survey of 59,000 companies across nine cultural sectors in 31 provincial regions.

As the country tries to shift its growth model to one that draws strength from domestic demand and services, it is planning to develop the cultural industry into a pillar industry of the national economy by 2020.