Southwest China's Tibet officially launched a Thangka painting project to create 100 pieces of Thangka, in a move to inherit and develop the region's Thangka art.

The project, as a key program to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Tibet's peaceful liberation, is aimed at marking the historical achievements and reforms as well as other remarkable changes of Tibet in the past 60 years.

A total of 100 classic Thangka depicting the historic figures, events, scenes and changes will be finished within a year and be exhibited permanently in Lhasa, capital of Tibet.

The Thangka paintings will be published in catalogue and exhibited across the country.

The project, approved by the regional government, is undertaken by Tibet Artists Association to promote and encourage the inheritance, innovation and development of Tibetan Thangka art, and to better serve the society and educate the local people, according to the organizer, the local publicity department.

Tibet has set up consultant groups, including a leading group of the painting project, a historical committee and an artistic committee to guide and organize the big-scale project, the largest of its kind in Tibet.

Tibet also plans to make itself the national center of Thangka art with continuous development of its ethnic culture.