Culture is the heart and soul of a city and Chengdu is promoting what it calls its Tianfu culture.

Chengdu and its surroundings have long been known for abundance and prosperity, called the "Country of Heaven" or Tianfu Zhi Guo.

The 13th Chengdu Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, held last year, first put forward the concept of Tianfu culture, as a banner to advocate the city's charms. According to the latest Chengdu work report, the city will enhance the development of its culture, leading to a creative, tolerant and friendly Tianfu culture that will improve its competitiveness and soft power.

To facilitate the transition, on Feb 23 Chengdu officially released its Action Plan to Construct Western Center of Culture and Creativity.

According to the plan, the city expects to become an important national creative cultural center by 2022, with industries expected to contribute over 260 billion yuan ($41 billion) to overall GDP.

Its creative cultural activities by 2022 are themselves expected to contribute around 12 percent to the city's GDP.

Chengdu will focus on developing eight creative industries. According to the master plan, these include the media and film, creative design, fashion, music, information services and educational consultancy industries.

The city plans to invest about 1.1 trillion yuan in 437 key projects. Twenty will kick off this year with a total investment of 160 billion yuan.

The Sino-France Chengdu Giant Panda Ecological & Creative Industries Park, also called Panda Planet - a unique panda-themed park being built by Chinese and French companies and set to be completed in 2021 - will house pandas, industrial incubators and international communities.

According to the plan, the first stage of the park will comprise eight centers, including an interactive museum for natural sciences and the arts, an intellectual property research and development center for the giant panda, an agriculture center, and an educational center for sustainable development.

The Tianfu Jincheng development project, set to break ground this year, will rise in the central part of Chengdu. Covering an area of 13.6 square kilometers, it will include museums, libraries, art galleries, cinemas and sport centers.

"Building an important creative cultural center is the city's path to innovative development," said Yang Jirui, president of the China Consumer Economics Society.

He said the development amply displayed the city's awareness, confidence, its inheritance and the innovation of its culture, rooted in its long history.

The development is also significant, in that it will satisfy its people's growing desire for a better life in the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, Yang said.

"Chengdu is home to many famous names in Chinese culture and the arts, which ensures its power to realize these goals," said Tan Ping, president of the Research Institute of Tianfu Culture.

"Over thousands of years, different cultures have met and integrated with each other here, forming a unique cultural phenomenon."

The institute was founded in October last year to further study Tianfu culture and provide training for creative cultural endeavors and related staff, supported by more than 50 experts and scholars from China and overseas.

Chengdu has promulgated a series of policies to attract talented people to develop its creative cultural industry, Tan said.

An example is Fanmate Museum, which was renovated from an abandoned steel pipe plant.

It provides space for musical performances as well as design, exhibitions and companies operating in the field of the arts, to help develop the city's creative economy, according to He Jun, deputy general manager of Sichuan Zhenghuo Media Co Ltd.

He welcomed the government's promise to guarantee the supply of land for the creative cultural industry in the development plan.

"Those policies backed the development of our company in the initial stages," he said.

"Construction of the second phase of the museum has also been approved, utilizing disused factories, which gave us more confidence."

In addition, the company was given a subsidy to recruit personnel in the creative cultural field. As a result the group plans to hire more staff in the future.

To help with the financing of its cultural endeavors, the city established a dedicated 10 billion yuan fund.

The Bank of Chengdu mandated two of its branches to target the creative cultural sector.

Zou Rui, president of the Tiandaozhujing Architectural Landscape and Urban Design Institute, said Chengdu had learned the lessons of the past.

As a result it said it will develop its creative cultural sector sensitively and intelligently. In the process it aims to succeed in creating a relaxing lifestyle in a harmonious relation to nature, ensuring the city takes its place as the new Tianfu - a promised land - on the global stage.