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Chinese authors will turn out in force at the summer’s literary festivals while a Chinese Tea Culture Exhibition, created by the National Tea Museum in Hnagzhou will tour the country with a programme of tea-tastings, lectures and workshops.

China is now the world’s fourth largest art market and many of its leading contemporary artists will feature in a national exhibition trail taking in British regional museums and major London institutions such as the British Museum, the Serpentine Gallery and the Saatchi Gallery.

One of the key commissions will be available to anyone, in the virtual world of Second Life, where Cao Fei, a video artist from Guangzhou has created a fictional society embracing communism, capitalism and Chinese mythology and named after Chinese currency.

It will be shown on giant public screens provided by the BBC in several UK cities this summer.

Lucy Charkin, art adviser to China Now said: “It’s a virtual China- a real mish mash of everything. Cao Fei is interested in the changing landscape of China. Anyone can buy property in RMB City, erect a skyscraper or build a museum, just like you can in modern China.”

The sound artists Zhong Minjie, Yan Jun and Wang Changcun have created a series of projects which will bring the clatter of Chinese streets, shops, bars, and offices to the Southbank Centre ballroom in London. At several other locations headphone walking tours will lead listeners through Chinese soundscapes in their local area. For example, when they pass a playground they will hear the sound of Chinese schoolchildren playing.

A major exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum this spring will investigate the recent explosion of new design in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

There are grants and education packs for primary and secondary schools to introduce children to Mandarin, Chinese myths, Kung Fu and Beijing Opera. In Beijing, FA-qualified coaches are about to put 2,012 Chinese children through three months of intensive football training prior to a UK tour in May.

Alan Parker, the vice-chairman of China Now and chairman of the Brunswick Group said that the template for the programme was The Japan Festival held in 1991, which brought sumo wrestlers to the Albert Hall as part of a raft of Japanese themed cultural events.

“If you talk to the Anglo-Japanese community they say it fundamentally changed the relationship between the two countries in a really lasting way. It was also chaired by my father.”

The Times is a media partner for China Now, which runs from February 4 to July 27.