In recent years, Huai'an has been focusing on building a City of Books, with "Reading for the Rise of China" as the core of the initiative. It has taken the construction of a Scholarly Huai'an as an important project to shape the city's character, enhance its cultural atmosphere, and highlight its intrinsic qualities. Notably, the construction of a City of Books has been promoted in depth and carried out throughout the entire region.

Key efforts have been made to build the Huai'an Study reading spaces. Huai'an Study (Wu Cheng'en Former Residence Store) and Huai'an Study (Wanyou Natural History Bookstore) have become public cultural spaces that integrate multiple functions and business formats, including book lending and sales, lectures, salons, and coffee and tea services. To date, the city has set up 95 township- and sub-district-level Huai'an Study spaces and 457 Huai'an Small Study spaces, significantly improving the quality of reading spaces.

Digital reading has been promoted in an orderly manner. Based on trams, the city has established the Huai'an Study Digital Mobile Library, receiving over 500,000 QR code scans from nearly 1.15 million passengers. Besides, the city has developed a citywide electronic reading map, with basic information on reading venues and reading activities updated in real time. In addition, the city has innovatively built a 423 cable TV audiobook channel, which gathers more than 2,200 kinds of audio reading resources, available to 2 million cable TV terminals across the city, and the number of visits has reached 1.6 million.

Various interesting reading activities have been carried out under the initiative. The "Reading Map Exploration Activity for Minors" has been carried out for six consecutive years, with 69 locations serving as reading map checkpoints, and it has received a total of 2.6 million participants. The "A Good Book to Bring Home for the New Year" public reading initiative has been carried out for six consecutive years, with a total of 57,000 books donated by various sectors of society. The College Volunteers' Action for Encouraging National Reading has been carried out for four consecutive years, with over 2,900 university students participating in more than 4,300 volunteer service activities.