Li Qun, deputy minister of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, was entrusted by the State Council on the 18th to deliver the Report on the Implementation of Cultural Relics Work and Protection Law of the State Council to the 13th the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC). He pointed out that the security situation of cultural relics is still grim, with legal persons breaking the law, stealing and excavating, and fire accidents happening from time to time.
Cultural relics work is an important part of cultural construction. In recent years, major policy documents have been issued intensively, which provides further guarantee for promoting the implementation of the cultural relics protection law. Adhering to the principle of “protection first”, the situation of cultural relics protection has been significantly improved.
The report points out that since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, we have continuously cleared up the resources of cultural relics, completed the first national census of movable cultural relics, and deepened special investigations such as the Great Wall and cave temples; 766,700 immovable cultural relics and 108 million sets of state-owned movable cultural relics were registered. The State Council announced the seventh and eighth batch of national key cultural relics protection units, with a total of 5,058 national protection units.
At the same time, the long-term mechanism for the safety of cultural relics has been gradually improved. The public security organs detected 15,000 criminal cases of various cultural relics, arrested 14,000 suspects and recovered more than 100,000 pieces of cultural relics. Courts at all levels have accepted 3,996 public prosecution cases filed by procuratorial organs for obstructing the administration of cultural relics, involving 11,871 criminal suspects. In addition, the central government has invested more than 1 billion yuan (unit: RMB) annually in the safety project of cultural relics, and has supported the implementation of more than 3,500 safety protection projects of national security units.
Li Qun said that the opportunities and challenges of cultural relics work coexist. “There are still many gaps and problems in the cultural relics work against the target of building a strong socialist culture country, implementing the new development concept and building a new development pattern against the standard.”
According to the report, the security situation of cultural relics is still grim, with legal persons breaking the law, stealing and excavating, and fire accidents happening from time to time. Some places have failed to correctly handle the relationship between cultural relics protection, urban and rural construction and tourism development. The main responsibility of cultural relics protection is not in place, and problems such as large-scale demolition and construction of cultural relics, illegal construction, concealment and over-exploitation are prominent.
In addition, there are loopholes in safety management in some places, such as frequent cases of theft, excavation and reselling of smuggled cultural relics, inadequate management of fire and other potential safety hazards, and the ability of disaster prevention and mitigation needs to be strengthened urgently. The discipline system related to cultural relics protection and archaeology is not perfect enough, and the collation, research, interpretation and verification of archaeological achievements need to be strengthened urgently; The scientific and technological innovation of cultural relics is weak, the innovation system has not yet formed, and the protection, management and utilization system of cultural relics needs to be improved.
Li Qun said, next, we will further strengthen the legal protection of cultural relics, improve the legal and regulatory system of cultural relics protection, promote the legislation of the Great Wall, the Grand Canal, the Long March cultural relics and revolutionary cultural relics protection, implement major cultural relics protection projects, and further build a deeply integrated cultural relics science and technology innovation system in Industry-University-Research, so as to stimulate the strong momentum of cultural relics development. (Reporter Xing Wei Liang Xiaohui)