Limited screening capacity in China is holding back the development of Chinese films, a recent report on the country's film industry released has found.

China produced 456 feature films (documentaries and animated films not included) last year, the third most after India and the United States.

However, the report, based on a research project led by Yin Hong, a renowned film and TV communication professor at Tsinghua University, noted that most of these films could not enter the mainstream market.

"Due to limited screening capacity and market space, various cinemas' screening schedules have become very tight, which prevents sufficient screening opportunities for some films with commercial potential," said the report.

Only about 100 of these 456 films had large-scale screenings in the country, said the report.

The country had 4,723 screens by 2009. Most of them were in big cities.

According to the report, eight Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Chongqing, accounted for some 70 percent of 2009 domestic box office sales.

"China's film market has been experiencing imbalanced development. Thousands of medium and small cities contributed very little to the country's box office revenue," said the report.

The report was part of an annual blue book on the development of China's cultural industries released Thursday by the Social Sciences Academic Press under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Although China's 2009 domestic box office grossed 6.2 billion yuan (US911 million) with a remarkable 42.9 percent growth, only 11 domestically-made films earned more than 100 million yuan.

Figures show that the country imported 49 blockbusters from overseas last year, including 2012, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Up. These films took up one third of the country's total box office.