Rescuing and preserving cultural heritage of the ethnic minorities

A national planning group and office for collecting and publishing ancient books of the ethnic minorities have been established by the state to organize the work for the recovery, sorting-out and protection of ancient books of the ethnic minorities. By the end of 2008, several million titles of ancient books of ethnic minorities had been collected, of which over 110,000 had been edited. As many as 377 ancient titles of the ethnic minorities have been included in the first and second batches for the National Catalogue of Precious Ancient Books, and five institutions including the China Ethnic Library have been listed among the first and second groups of important institutions for the preservation of ancient books at the national level. Among them, the ancient Dongba literature manuscripts of the Naxi ethnic group have been listed in UNESCO's Memory of the World. In addition, the Chinese government has set up special institutions for the collection, editing, translation and research of the three major epics of the ethnic minorities: Gesar of the Tibetans, Jianggar of the Mongolians, and Manas of the Kirgiz, and significant progress has been made in the work. In recent years, the state has earmarked a large sum for the collating and publishing of the Tripitaka in China, an encyclopedia of Tibetan studies in 150 volumes.

For over three decades since the 1950s, more than 3,000 experts and scholars organized by the state completed their research, editing and publishing of five ethnic-minority subjects, including a series of books on the ethnic minorities in China, a series of books on concise histories of the ethnic minorities in China, a series of books on the languages of the ethnic minorities in China, a series of books on the overview of ethnic autonomous areas in China, and a series of monographs resulting from the survey of social histories of the ethnic minorities in China, totaling 403 volumes, 100 million Chinese characters and a print-run of over 500, 000 copies. In recent years, the state has organized the work for revision and reprinting of the above five series. From the 1950s up to now, the state has organized three large-scale surveys, striving to find the folk cultural and artistic materials of the minority peoples and prevent them from falling into oblivion. The government has also organized over 100,000 people and finished, after 30 years of effort, the compilation of the Ten Collections of China's Folk Cultures and Arts of Ethnic Groups, a key subject of the National Philosophy and Social Sciences Plan. The collections comprise 298 volumes (450 sub-volumes) in 500 million Chinese characters. In addition, the state has also organized and completed the publishing of 108 titles on various artistic theories of the ethnic minorities, totaling approximately 25 million Chinese characters.

Beginning in the 1980s, the state has invested large sums in the renovation and maintenance of key cultural relics sites under the state protection, including the Drepung, Sera and Gandan monasteries in Lhasa of Tibet, the Kumbum Monastery in Qinghai Province and the Kizil Thousand-Buddha Cave in Xinjiang. Between 1989 and 1994, the state invested 55 million yuan, 1,000 kg of gold and a large quantity of silver in repairing the famous Potala Palace. Since 2001 the Chinese government appropriated 380 million yuan as a special fund for repairing the Potala Palace, Norbulingka and Sakya Monastery. In the 11th Five-year Plan period (2006-2010), the government will invest 570 million yuan as special fund for the maintenance and protection of 22 major cultural relics sites in Tibet. Since 2005 the state has input 400million yuan for preserving over 20 key cultural relics and historical sites in Xinjiang in the 11th Five-year Plan period. To date, in ethnic autonomous areas there are 366 key cultural relics and historical sites under state protection, of which two are included in the World Heritage List - Historic Ensemble of the Potala Palace in Lhasa and the Old Town of Lijiang, and three are cited as World Natural Heritage - Jiuzhaigou Valley, Huanglong Scenic and Historic Interest Area and Protected Area of Three Parallel Rivers (Nujiang, Jinsha and Lancang) in Yunnan.

The state also attaches great importance to the preservation of the intangible cultural heritage of the ethnic minorities. Since 2002, funds from the central coffers have totaled 386 million yuan for preserving intangible heritage items, a quarter of which has been used in minority areas. Among the two groups of 1,028 items on the national intangible cultural heritage list published by the State Council, 367 are associated with the ethnic minorities, taking up 35.7 percent of the total. All the 55 ethnic minorities in China have their own items on the list. Among the three groups of 1,488 representative inheritors of national intangible cultural heritage projects, 393 belong to the ethnic minorities, accounting for 26.4 percent. The Mukam Art of the Uyghur people and the Mongolian Long Folk Songs have been listed in the third group of UNESCO's "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Mankind."