China's social possession of television sets has topped 400 million, or, one in three individuals owns a TV set, a high-rank official said Saturday.

"The TV industry in China has gone through a process from hard beginning to gradual growth and to fast development since it was launched in 1950s," said Wang Taihua, head of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), at a forum held in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The forum, themed at the development and cooperation in TV industry, was part of the 6th China-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Expo held from Tuesday to Saturday in a bid to advance exchanges and trade between China and ASEAN countries.

There are 1,283 public TV channels in China, the most in the world. TV has become a modern, digitized and dominant mass medium in China, Wang said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 24, 2009)