China steps up protection for cultural relics

China is stepping up protection of its cultural relics, as historic sites crumble to ruins.

Lyu Zhou, a professor with the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, told Xinhua on Thursday that a revised edition of the Protection Regulation for Chinese Cultural Relics will be published soon.

"The revised regulation will come out sometime in October or November," Lyu said at a seminar in Dunhuang City in northwest China's Gansu Province.

The regulation was compiled by the China branch of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS/China) in 2000, and has since become the standard for relics protection in China thanks to the recommendation of State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH). Revision work on it began in 2009.

The new regulation will detail what defines ancient sites and impose specific requirements on the presentation of these sites in China, Lyu said.

China is home to huge numbers of historic relics. According to a national archaeological survey completed in 2011, there are more than 760,000 registered unmovable cultural items and 2,384 state museums holding 28.6 million items of interest.

Since 1978 when serious reform got underway, China has been striving to protect its past. The 1982 Cultural Relics Protection Law was an institutional guarantee and various local regulations have also sprung up.

Despite some progress, preservation is quite imbalanced, with many delinquent areas. Stories of vandalism abound and have generated numerous headlines in recent years, tarnishing the image of the Chinese people and worrying experts, anxious about the future of history.

In November 2013, a famous covered bridge in the southwestern Chongqing Municipality --"Asia's No.1 Covered Bridge"-- was destroyed by fire.

This was preceded by another incident, in which one of the four famous gardens in Guangdong's Dongguan City, the Daosheng Garden, with over 150 years of history, was demolished by the local government.

Last year, eight ancient cities, including Dali in the southwestern Yunnan Province, were warned by the central government for their inability to protect their local cultural heritage.

According to a SACH's survey in 2011, of three quarters of a million unmovable cultural relics, roughly 130,000 (18 percent) were considered to be in a bad condition and over 60,000 were described as "terrible". This means that about one fourth of the relics need serious protection.