The government of Danfeng, a poverty-stricken county in China's Northwest Shaanxi province, denied the county is developing a cultural and tourism industrial park project for 11.2 billion yuan ($1.78 billion).

A newspaper reported on Wednesday that the county government had planned a 100-hectare park in Dihua township, the hometown of well-known writer Jia Pingwa.

It would reportedly include Jia Pingwa Writers' Village, an ancestral cultural zone and an ancient commercial street.

The county government responded that it planned to invest 200 million yuan to build an integrated tourism development zone for shooting a TV series adapted from one of Jia's works, and to rebuild some ancient buildings.

Jia Pingwa also sent a text message to a reporter saying that the media report of the 11.2-billion-yuan project was a "distorted report".

The funding for the 200-million-yuan project will mainly come from other investors, not the county, the government said.