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May 25, 2006 |
I. Background of China’s protection of intangible cultural heritage China is a unified multi-ethnic country with time-honored history and splendid ancient civilization which has endowed the Chinese nation with extremely rich cultural heritage. This rich and colorful cultural heritage is the crystallization of the wisdom and civilization of the Chinese people, the fundamental component of Chinese culture, the bond of affections between all ethnic groups, the foundation of national unity, the important bridge to transmit and inherit Chinese civilization and also the reflection of our aspiring national spirit. Cultural heritage includes tangible cultural heritage and intangible cultural heritage. As early as in the 1950s, China began to establish the protection system of cultural heritage. At present, a relatively complete protection system of tangible cultural heritage has already been formed. In recent years, great efforts have been made by the Chinese government in protecting the intangible cultural heritage. In 2004, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Finance issued information to formally kick off the implementation of the “National Project for the Protection of Folk and Ethnic Cultures”. The scope of intangible cultural heritage covers: poems, fairy tales, epics, stories, legends and proverbs that have been spread orally among people for a long time; folk performing arts like traditional music, dance, drama, quyi, acrobatics, puppet show, shadow play, etc.; folk practices like rituals, festivals, sports, competitions, production related and life related customs; folk traditional knowledge and practices related to nature and the universe; traditional handcraft skills; and cultural space related to the above-mentioned expressions. The CPC and the government attach great importance to the protection of cultural heritage. All concerned departments and institutions have also done a lot of work and have made remarkable achievement. China is now making efforts in gradually establishing a relatively complete protection system. However, with the acceleration of globalization and modernization, dramatic changes have taken place in China’s cultural ecology: intangible cultural heritage is confronted with great challenges and a lot of orally and behaviorally transmitted cultural heritage disappear one after another; a great deal of traditional craftsmanship is on the verge of extinction; a large number of precious objects and materials of historical and cultural values are destroyed, deserted or lost in foreign countries; arbitrary misuse and excessive exploitation of intangible cultural heritage occur from time to time. Therefore, the protection of intangible cultural heritage brooks no delay.
In the protection work of intangible cultural heritage, the Chinese government follows the guiding principle of “protection as priority, rescue as primacy, rational utilization, and inheritance for development”, persisting in maintaining the authenticity and comprehensiveness of intangible cultural heritage and properly handle the relationship between protection and utilization. We should realize the rational utilization under the precondition of efficient protection, and prevent the misunderstanding, distortion and misuse of intangible cultural heritage. On the basis of scientific acknowledgement, efficient measures have been adopted so as to make intangible cultural heritage get recognition, respect and promotion in the society. In the meantime, the government also pursues the working principle of “government leadership, social participation, clarification of duty & responsibility, combination of forces, as well as long-term planning, implementation by steps, integrating priorities with entirety, and emphasis on effect and efficiency”, and strive to, with the efforts from all walks of life in China, take gradual steps to establish a full-fledged system of Chinese characteristics on the protection of intangible cultural heritage so that precious and endangered intangible cultural heritage of great historical, cultural and scientific values can be effectively protected, promoted and carried forward. Recent years have witnessed a long standing development of the protection work of intangible cultural heritage, mainly reflected as follows: 1. Legislation Since 1998, the Ministry of Culture and Committee of Education, Science, Culture, Health and Sports of National People’s Congress have been actively engaged in the research and survey of domestic and foreign legislations and on this basis organized the drafting of Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Folk and Ethnic Traditional Culture (Draft), and referred it to the National People’s Congress in August 2002. In August 2004, China officially joined the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage after ratification of the Standing Committee of National People’s Congress. In light of our commitment to the international conventions, the draft law has been renamed as Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage. At present, a legislative leadership panel composed of personnel from the National People’s Congress, Department of Publicity of the CPC Central Committee and Ministry of Culture has been established to further work on the draft law. At present, statutes on the protection of folk and ethnic traditional culture were also promulgated one after another by Yunnan, Guizhou, Fujian provinces, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Xiangxi county of Hunan province, Enshi county of Hubei province, Suzhou city of Jiangsu provice, etc.. 2. Working mechanism In the year 2003, the leadership panel of the project of protecting folk and ethnic culture with the members from the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Finance, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and some other related departments set up the expert committee composed of experts from various fields. Besides, the leadership panel offices and research center were also set up respectively under the Ministry of Culture and the Chinese Art Research Institute. In 2005, the Inter-ministerial Joint Committee on the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage was founded. The joint committee is composed of the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of education, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Construction, the State Bureau of Tourism, the Bureau of Religious Affairs and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. In 2006, in order to implement the Circular on Strengthening the Protection of Cultural Heritage issued by the State Council, on the basis of the nine departments, the general office of the State Council took the lead to include the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of National Land Resources, the General Administration of Customs, the State Administration of Forestry, Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, and some other departments into the joint committee and formed a national leadership panel of cultural heritage protection composed of 15 departments, which has strengthened the coordination and cooperation among different departments. At present, all the related protection work of intangible cultural heritage is under steady development. 3. Related documents In keeping with the spirit of the 16th CPC Party Congress on “supporting the protection of important cultural heritage and fine folk arts” and to perform China’s obligations after its accession into the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Finance issued in collaboration the Circular on the Implementation of the Project of Protecting China’s Ethnic and Folk Culture. On March 31st 2005, the General Office of the State Council promulgated the Recommendations on Intensifying the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in China, a directive in furthering the protection of intangible cultural heritage in China. On December 23, 2005, the State Council promulgated the Circular on Strengthening the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage, proposing that, since 2006, the second Saturday of every June will be designated as the National Cultural Heritage Day in China, which has provided a strong guarantee for the intensification of cultural heritage protection. 4. The application and identification work of the first group of national masterpieces of intangible cultural heritage In the spirit of the Recommendations on Intensifying the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage in China, which pointed out the necessity to develop an inventory system of intangible heritage masterpieces on state, provincial, municipal and county levels according to examination and assessment criteria and scientific identification, in order to rescue and protect valuable national cultural heritage, to promote the best of ethnic and traditional cultures and substantiate the socialist advanced culture, the Ministry of Culture began to organize the application, assessment, publication and investigation work of the first group of items on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage List. With strong support from the members of the Inter-ministerial Joint Committee on the protection of the intangible cultural heritage, the local governments and the related departments as well a lot of experts and scholars, the first group of 518 items has been finally determined into the list of recommended candidature out of 1315 items applied by the 31 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities and related departments of the central government. After the investigation and approval by the Inter-ministerial Joint Committee on the protection of the intangible cultural heritage, the list of recommended candidature is now ready for submission to the State Council. 5. National exhibition on the achievement of the intangible cultural heritage protection and special evening gala and events From February 12 to March 16, 2006, the Ministry of Culture, the National Commission of Reform and Development, the Ministry of Education, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Construction, the State Administration of Tourism, the Bureau of Religious Affairs and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage co-held the “Exhibition on the Achievements of Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection in China” in the National Museum, and in the meantime, presented a special evening gala of the Exhibition in the Ethnic Cultural Palace. All these efforts have extensively materialized the guidelines and policies of the Chinese government in protecting intangible cultural heritage and comprehensively presented the achievements made by the Chinese government and all social circles in the work of protecting the intangible cultural heritage. The state and CPC leaders like Mr. Li Changchun, Mr. Liu Yunshan and Mdm. Chen Zhili, leaders from relevant departments, as well as some representatives and members of the two sessions (NPC and CPPPCC) visited the exhibition. The exhibition and performing gala received great attention and acclamation from various social circles. According to incomplete statistics, the number of visitors to the exhibition exceeded 350,000. 6. General investigation In order to obtain full knowledge of the types, number, distribution, living environment, current situation of protection and existing problems related to the intangible cultural heritage of different regions and ethnicities, the Ministry of Culture especially issued the Circular on the General Census of Intangible Cultural Heritage, requiring the local governments to follow the guidance of the Handbook on the Census of China’s Ethnic and Folk Culture Protection and conduct the general census on the basis of existing investigation results and their local situations. The Ministry of Culture entrusted the research and protection center of the China Art Research Institute to arrange the national training workshop of general census for twice. At present, the general census work is under steady development across the country. 7. A series of activities about the National Cultural Heritage Day According to the Circular of the State Council, the Ministry of Culture and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, on the basis of the opinions solicited from relevant departments, promulgated the action plan for the 2006 Cultural Heritage Day as follows: a. A grand cultural heritage exhibition and performance evening gala show themed as Protecting Our Cultural Heritage, Safeguard Our Spiritual Homeland; b. A special exhibition about the National Cultural Heritage Day, exhibitions on the precious ancient Chinese documents and their protection, exhibitions on the precious cultural heritage of the ethnic minorities, exhibitions on the protection of China’s traditional medicine, exhibitions on the excellence of China’s ethnic costumes and some themed exhibition about the cultural heritage protection; c. Lectures about the protection of cultural heritage, knowledge popularization and academic exchange activities like the special forum on the protection and development of Chinese local dramas; d. On the cultural heritage day, it is planned that conditionally-suitable public cultural facilities such as cultural heritage units, museums and memorials shall be open to the public for free. 8. The establishment of archive data base In light of the guideline of the State Council that is “to use a variety of means such as text, sound recording, video recording and digital multimedia to make an authentic, systematic and comprehensive record of intangible cultural heritage, and establish archives and databases”, database and website of national level intangible cultural heritage are now being set up. 9. Intensification of the theoretical study on intangible cultural heritage In order to promote the theoretical building about the protection of the intangible cultural heritage, further clarify the related definition about the intangible cultural heritage, study on the means and ways of protecting intangible cultural heritage and intensify the research, identification, preservation and dissemination of the intangible cultural heritage, the Ministry of Culture organized several occasions for various cultural units, scientific and research institutions, high educational institutions and schools as well as experts and scholars to discuss over some important theories about and practical problems faced by intangible cultural heritage. 10. Active application for UNESCO Proclamation of “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” Since the launching of the application work of the oral and intangible heritage masterpieces of humanity by the UNESCO in 2000, China’s Kunqu art, Guqin art, Uygur Muqam art of Xinjiang Autonomous Region and the Mongolian ethnic Long Song have been proclaimed as “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity” by UNESCO since 2001. With the great importance attached by the CPC and the central government,
under the common effort of the whole society, China will gradually establish
a full-fledged system of protecting intangible cultural heritage with
Chinese characteristics so as to make contributions to the transmission
of the Chinese civilization, the construction of the socialist advanced
culture with Chinese characteristics and the overall building of the
well-off society.
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