China has made significant progress in preserving cultural relics and advancing archaeological research during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), said the country's vice minister of culture and tourism Rao Quan on Wednesday. Rao elaborated on China's concrete actions and the fruitful results in this regard at a press conference as part of a news briefing series initiated by the State Council Information Office (SCIO) on China's high-quality achievements during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
"We have basically figured out a full inventory of cultural relics resources nationwide this time. The fourth national census of cultural relics has achieved major phased results, with re-verification finished for all 767,000 sites registered in the third census, and more than 130,000 new relic sites newly discovered. We have also completed the surveys on and declaration of national grotto temples, cliff carvings, ancient famous steles and famous engraved cultural relics, revolutionary cultural relics resources, etc," said Rao.
"The overall condition of cultural relic protection has significantly improved. With cultural relic resources as the backbone, we have provided strong support for the construction of national cultural parks of the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, and the Long March. Fiscal spending on cultural relic protection at all levels continues to increase, with nearly 2,000 key national relic conservation and restoration projects steadily executed, with over 1,200 preventive conservation projects for museum collections effectively carried out, and with 37 revolutionary cultural relics protection and utilization zones protected in a concentrated and contiguous manner," Rao said.
China has also seen fruitful results in archaeology so far in the 2021-2025 period. More than 7,700 active and construction-related excavation projects have been approved and carried out. Major discoveries have been made at sites such as the Niuheliang National Archaeological Site in northeast China, the Shimao Cultural Relics Site in northwest China, the Erlitou Cultural Relics Site in central China, and the Sanxingdui Ruins in southwest China, while deep-sea archaeology on two shipwrecks in the South China Sea has reached world-class levels, Rao said.
As this year marks the final year of the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the SCIO launched the briefing series to highlight the practices and notable achievements made by various departments in pursuing high-quality development and in accomplishing the goals and tasks of the plan.
Significant progress made in cultural relics protection, archaeological discoveries in 2021-2025
