Intrepid hikers will not be permitted to explore those unprotected sections of the Great Wall around Beijing from August onwards.

The move is part of a long-awaited regulation aimed at protecting the Great Wall and was brought in by the Beijing Administrative Bureau of Cultural Relics Thursday.

The Beijing Municipality which extends far beyond the city's urban environs, has some 629 kilometers of the wall. But an increasing number of visitors in recent years to the wilder and more fragile stretches is threatening irreparable harm to the structure.

Each year, an average 5 to 6 million people from all over the world visit sections of the Great Wall around Beijing, bringing in millions in revenue, but causing incalculable damage, according to the bureau's statistics.

In the past decade the municipality's counties and townships have designed a series of visitor areas along the wall and also a number of hotels, shops and other facilities including cable cars which carry visitors to the steep sections.

"Some areas of the Great Wall have lost parts of their original structures, such as military installations, and instead look more like a market," Sun Ling, an official with the bureau, told a press conference Thursday in Beijing.

The new regulation has given the bureau the authority to draft a ruling which prohibits the building of any structure that poses physical and aesthetic damage to the wall and its natural setting. The prohibition extends 500 meters on either side of the wall.

Another major problem for the relic protection department is that half of the Great Wall, mostly hidden in the mountains, is in a poor state, lacks protection and is in urgent need of renovation.

The daily activities of local villagers, such as herding, gathering firewood and cultivating wasteland, have hastened the natural deterioration of the wall.

More recently, as more and more people like to explore the wild sections of the wall, these parts have also been placed in jeopardy.

Under the new regulation, any activities, including those mentioned, which damage or threaten the Great Wall will be forbidden.

The new regulation is said to be the first one in the country dedicated to the protection of the Great Wall.

(China Daily June 27, 2003)