HANGZHOU - China attaches great importance to cultural cooperation and exchanges with the world and will progressively expand the opening up in this area, a senior Chinese culture official said.

"So far, China has signed cultural cooperation agreements with 149 countries and 485 implementation plans for cultural exchange and cooperation with 97 countries to promote mutual trust and friendship," Vice Minister of Culture Zhao Shaohua said at an international congress on culture and sustainable development.

For centuries, Chinese people have promoted a worldwide value of harmony in their social lives and appreciated morality and justice in political ethics, Zhao said at the three-day conference that opened on Wednesday in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang province. The event was the first of its kind to be organized by UNESCO since 1998.

Enhancing cooperation between Chinese culture and different cultures and civilizations of the world is important for mutual understanding and learning, as well as the maintenance of world peace and harmony, she said.

In recent years, China has built high-level cultural exchange mechanisms with the United States, Britain, Europe and Russia, and deepened more than 10 bilateral cultural coordination systems, the vice minister said.