There is a World Heritage Craze in China. China claims to have the longest continuous civilization in the world and is seeking recognition from UNESCO. This book explores three dimensions of the UNESCO World Heritage initiative with particular relevance for China: the universal agenda, the national practices, and the local responses. With a sociological lens, this book offers comprehensive insights into World Heritage, as well as China’s deep social, cultural, and political structures.

​This volume explores China’s cultural heritage ideology and policies from three interrelated perspectives: the State and World Heritage tourism; cultural heritage tourism at undesignated sites, and the cultural politics of museums and collections. Something of a cultural heritage designation craze is happening in China. This is new within even the last five to ten years. Officials at many levels now see heritage preservation as a means for commoditizing their regions. They are devoting new resources and attention to national and international heritage designations. Thus, addressing cultural heritage politics in a nation dedicated to designation is an important project, particularly in the context of a rapidly growing economy. This volume is also important because it addresses a very wide range of cultural heritage, providing an excellent sample of case studies: historic vernacular urban environments, ethnic tourism, scenic tourism, pilgrimage as tourism, tourism and economic development, museums, border heritage, underwater remains, and the actual governance and management of the sites. This volume is an outstanding introduction to cultural heritage issues in China while contributing to Chinese studies for those with greater knowledge of the area.

China is a country that is rich in antiquities, but it is also a victim of looting that occurred during the period from the First Opium War to the end of the Japanese Occupation (1840–1945) when innumerable cultural objects were lost overseas. The Chinese Government insists on asserting its interest over its wrongfully removed cultural heritage and has sought for the return of lost cultural heritage by all means in accordance with relevant international conventions and Chinese laws. However, securing the return has been, and continues to be, problematic. Little research has been done regarding the question as to whether China has a legal basis for recovery, which is the first legal hurdle that China needs to get over. In addition, China does not have a legal basis for all cultural heritage taken during the period of 1840–1945. Claims for return without a legal basis are usually silenced or, at best, discussed only but very rarely facilitated. This book provides an answer for the return of Chinese cultural heritage. It examines the law contemporaneous to the removal of Chinese cultural heritage and its application. For this lack of a legal basis, this book argues that a new customary international law is emerging, according to which the interests of the states of origin in their wrongfully removed heritage should be prioritised. This proposed customary rule supports the return of wrongfully removed heritage. Once this proposed customary rule is accepted, it will provide a stronger argument not only for China, but also for other states of origin with a similar dilemma, including South Korea, Egypt, Greece, Cambodia, Turkey, Peru, and Italy, to recover their wrongfully removed heritage. While dealing with a large pool of return cases, this book is valuable to museums and art collectors in the event of buying and accepting art objects, and settling recovery disputes with states of origin. It will also be of interest to researchers, academics, policymakers, and students in the fields of cultural heritage law, international law, international trade, and human rights law.

Heritage Sites in Contemporary China: Cultural Policies and Management Practices focuses on cultural heritage policies in China emerging in the period of the 11th and 12th Five Year Plans. Various important Chinese sites across China are investigated, including Luoyang Sui, Daming Gong, Niuheliang, Xinjiang, and Nanyuewang through the dual perspective of archaeological debate and as a case study of policy making. It explores the relationship between policy and the institutional and administrative conditions, such as budgeting and land concerns, which affect it. Building on the research project implemented by the China Academy for Cultural Heritage (CACH) from 2012–2014, which focused on the impact of the Dayizhi Policy for Great Archaeological Sites, the book provides an interdisciplinary insider’s approach to viewing archaeological discoveries; policies and emerging practices in site and archaeological management; and public administration in China. Featuring contributions from experts within CACH and from the Chinese community of archaeologists, and including numerous tables, data and maps, it will appeal to researchers and scholars in disciplines such as archaeology, heritage management, public administration, and policy making.

Based on the author's careful rethinking of certain themes and arguments presented in the first edition, this revised version of China's Cultural Heritage also draws heavily upon the enormous body of new scholarship on Chinese history and culture that has appeared in the last decade. Although focused primarily on the Qing Dynasty, the book not only sheds valuable light on the distant past but it also helps us to understand China's contemporary problems of modernization.

The recent heritage boom in China is transforming local social, economic, and cultural life and reshaping domestic and global notions of China's national identity. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork conducted largely by young anthropologists in China, Grassroots Values and Local Cultural Heritage in China departs from the dominant top-down UNESCO-influenced narrative of cultural heritage preservation and approaches the local not as a fixed definition of place but as a shifting site of negotiation between state, entrepreneurial, transcultural, and local community interests. The volume takes readers along an unusual trajectory between a disadvantaged neighborhood in central Beijing, metropolitan centers in Anhui and Sichuan, Quanzhou in the southeast, and Yunnan in the southwest before finally ending at the great Samye Monastery in Tibet. Across these sites, the contributors converge in apprehending the grassroots as an arena of everyday life and belonging underpinning ordinary social interactions and cultural practices as diverse as funeral rituals, Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimages, and encounters between young contemporary artists and the Bloomsbury Group. In examining the diversity of local cultural practices and knowledge that underpin ideas about cultural value, this volume argues that grassroots cultural beliefs are essential to the liveability and sustainability of life and living heritage.

This edited book examines the significance of intangible cultural heritage to local communities and the state in Hong Kong and China. Through ethnographic studies, the various chapters in this edited book argue for the role of the local community in the creation and conservation of the intangible cultural heritage and traditions. Irrespective of whether they are selected and listed as regional, national or UNESO intangible cultural heritage, they are part of the living traditions unique to that particular local community. This edited book argues that there are threefold significance of intangible cultural heritage to the local community and the state. First, intangible cultural heritage is seen as a social prestige. Second, it acts as socio-cultural and economic capital for members of the community to tap into to ensure socio-cultural and economic sustainability of the community. Finally, the intangible cultural heritage serves as a depository of the collective memories of the community, linking the past to the present and the future.

The Chinese state uses cultural heritage as a source of power by linking it to political and economic goals, but heritage discourse has at the same time encouraged new actors to appropriate the discourse to protect their own traditions. This book focuses on that contested nature of heritage, especially through the lens of individuals, local communities, religious groups, and heritage experts. It examines the effect of the internet on heritage-ization, as well as how that process affects different groups of people.

This volume contains high quality articles, originally published in Chinese in the Chinese Journal Jiuzhou Xuelin [Chinese Cultural Quarterly] and new articles written on special invitation by established scholars in the field. The theme of the volume is 'New Perspectives on Research of Chinese Culture', introducing the latest trends and new developments in the research into Chinese history, humanities, music and geography. The articles are written by well-known scholars in the field who examine Chinese culture from various new perspectives adopting different research methods.

Cultural Heritage Management in China presents a thematic examination of the development of cultural heritage management (CHM) in an Asian context. It challenges assumptions of the primacy of community-sponsored action and heritage authority based on Western-derived ideals and practices that fit with democratic models for civil action. The multidisciplinary team of international contributors analyze four key case studies of cities along the Pearl River Delta examining their administrative characteristics, economic growth and their relationship with cultural identity and human relationships. Providing an innovative study of cultural heritage management, this book will be of interest to students of Asian and cultural studies, as well as offering valuable insights into Asian culture and society itself.