A senior official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has called for more efforts in improving the country's innovation capabilities to accelerate the transformation of economic growth pattern.

Li Changchun, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks while making an inspection tour to south China's Guangdong Province from Thursday to Sunday.

"Indigenous innovation is the way out for an expedited transformation of the economic growth pattern," said Li, who told the local government officials to persist in the transformation of the economic growth pattern as a key element and strategic step in implementing the scientific outlook on development.

Li called on the local authorities to make great efforts in expanding the culture sector and get inspriration from doing so to keep improving quality and efficiency of economic development, trying hard to find new ways for China's sound and fast development of economy and society in the post-crisis era after the global financial downturn.

Li hoped Guangdong to pay equal emphasis on construction of iconic cultural projects and on building of cultural life at grassroots level. Efforts should be made to explore new ways for advancing administration of public cultural organizations and ways of service, to greatly enrich spiritual life of the broad masses of the people, he said.

Li stressed that it is imperative to improve mechanism of cultural market and establish platforms for evaluation of cultural assets, trading of property rights and venture capital investment in areas where conditions become mature.

"Pricing of cultural products should also be perfected so that more social funds are attracted to the cultural sector," said Li.

During his inspection tour in Guangdong, Li visited places including Guangzhou, the provincial capital, Yangjiang and Shenzhen, and inspected enterprises, units of publicity and culture, as well as construction sites of venues for the 16th Asian Games scheduled for Nov.12-27.