Grand Canal choked by urbanization, tourism

The hundreds of thousands of Chinese who spent more than 17 centuries building the country's Grand Canal received their posthumous reward when it was transcribed onto the UNESCO World Heritage List on June 22.

For all their toil, however, an arguably even tougher project awaits-protecting their work. While the UNESCO honor in many ways serves to preserve historical sites, there are questions over how the accompanying rush of tourists will affect the canal.

The section recognized by UNESCO runs some 1,011 kilometers through 25 cities of two municipalities and six provinces from south to north China. With local governments competing to lure visitors and develop canal-side attractions, there are already concerns about over-commercialization and the resulting damage. In modern, commercial China, it has proved difficult to coordinate management of the canal among the many local authorities that have jurisdiction over it.

A massive project

The section listed is far from being the whole waterway. The original length of the Grand Canal,dated back to 486 BC, exceeded 2,500 kilometers. While some of that has vanished, other parts are in a bad condition.

"When we talk about the canal's protection, it means protecting it as a whole, not only the part listed by UNESCO," said Qi Xin, deputy secretary-general of the Grand Canal sub-committee under the China Association of Cultural Relics Preservation.

"It's not a piecemeal approach, but a massive project," said Qi. "More importantly, the canal's not a temple or a mountain. It's a complicated system involving many land resources, cultural relics and water conservancy projects as well as environmental concerns."

"In terms of time and space, its protection is an unprecedented challenge. We have no model to follow worldwide," he added.

However, there's no time to mull the issue. Qi pointed out two pressing issues to deal with.

One is overdevelopment along the canal, mostly for real estate projects, which are harming the environment of the canal.

"In some places, a bunch of fake cultural relics have been built in the name of restoring original canal scenes to attract tourists, which goes against our intention when applying for the World Heritage application," Qi said.

Meanwhile, pollution is in danger of worsening as a huge number of tourists flow in.

"It's the fate of all World Heritage sites and a challenge to all their managers-you have to balance development and protection," Qi noted.

The protection concerns are not limited to the canal. The Mount Lushan Geopark in Jiangxi province and Zhangjiajie Geological Park in Hunan province have received warnings from UNESCO due to a failure to protect the sites from commercialization.

Hard solutions

Shan Jixiang, curator of the Palace Museum in Beijing, described the protection of the Grand Canal as important but arduous work, as over-exploitation of such areas has become common due to urbanization.

He suggested that the government could learn from the management of West Lake in Zhejiang, which was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2011. It has established a monitoring and management center in charge of protection of the site.

The center has set up surveillance cameras around the lake for real-time monitoring to prevent man-made damage.

It also built a database to analyze visitor flows and launch an early warning system to avoid overcrowding.

The government of Hangzhou has also already taken action to protect the Grand Canal. The city is located at the waterway's southern tip and has a section that is still in use today.

In 2003, the government set up a headquarters dedicated to managing the canal. By the end of 2013, more than 20 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) had been invested in protecting and enhancing cultural sites along its banks.

The Grand Canal section in Hangzhou attracted more than 59,000 tourists in 2009, when annual tourism income rose 162.06 percent year on year.

Zheng Hanxian, manager of Hangzhou Canal Group, admitted that there have been problems with over-commercialization and a lack of supervision at some spots along the canal.

But they have been seeking solutions. Traditional enterprises featuring high pollution have been removed from the canal bank and replaced by those with low energy costs, less pollution and high added value, according to Zheng.

In the meantime, the company has adopted a slew of green measures. Cruise boats on the river are low-carbon and LED lights are used to save electricity. Public bicycle rental stations are also dotted about.

Locals are involved in the protection work, Zheng added. Residents living along the canal have been encouraged to relocate, or they are allowed to stay there to run traditional businesses that it is hoped can both attract tourists and preserve local culture.

Zheng believes the secret of sound management of the canal is "to give the waterway back to the people."

Legal stake

As the waterway runs through eight provincial regions, a comprehensive management mechanism must be established to coordinate a variety of stakeholders sorting out problems in water conservation, transportation and protection of cultural relics.

Chen Tongbin, chief of the Institute of Historical Research of the China Architecture Design and Research Group, pointed out that it is difficult to communicate these points to all those interested parties in China.

"It is hard to imagine ancient China preserving peace and solidarity without the waterway's use in facilitating communication and cooperation among different regions," Chen said.

"But in today's China, rapid and massive urbanization is taking place and some officials who pursue personal career achievement have set their eyes on immediate interests, instead of long-term and overall gain."

"That explains the existence of some unqualified tourist projects along the waterway, such as the fake ancient brothel," said Qi Xin.

Qi believes China should create a special law to cover management of the Grand Canal as soon as possible to clarify "dos" and "don'ts."

In Yangzhou, a Jiangsu province city through which the canal runs, the economic planning department must solicit the opinions of the cultural heritage department in writing and the latter may veto any project once it suspects that the historic area might be endangered.

"That's a good example from one city, but far more is needed in terms of the whole project. We need consensus among all the parties," said Qi.