BEIJING: A number of deputies to the 14th National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, separately submitted motions last year on amending the Law on Protection of Cultural Relics, as they realized some aspects of the current legislation were no longer aligned with the actual needs of relic preservation.
Hang Kan, from Shanxi, a province rich in cultural resources, was one of them. Also director of the Yungang Grottoes Research Institute, his idea was mainly to strengthen the utilization of cultural relics by adding relevant provisions in the law. In October, the draft amendment to the law was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee for first review, providing toughened penalties for those who damage relics and requiring rational utilization of cultural resources.
The draft said cultural resources could be utilized properly under the premise of ensuring their safety, and the protection and display of cultural relics should also be enhanced through digital methods. Hang enrolled in the Department of Archaeology at Zhengzhou University in Henan province in 1982. That same year, China’s first specialized law in the cultural industry — the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics — came into effect.
In the decades he spent in fields and rural villages during his archaeological career, Hang not only gained a heightened awareness of the importance of protecting, inheriting and utilizing historical and cultural heritage, but also encountered numerous problems related to the preservation of cultural relics. For example, with the rapid development of China’s economy and society, insufficient funding for relic preservation, inadequate law enforcement and a shortage of talent had become evident in the relic industry, “which needs to be improved by amending the law”, he added.
After being elected an NPC deputy at the beginning of last year, Hang sorted out the difficulties he discovered at the front line, and also conducted surveys and interviews with those living in ancient villages and working for tourist sites and cultural relics protection departments. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
