China will improve the application of sci-tech in cultural relics protection during the country’s 14th Five-Year Plan period. In the face of an increasingly complex and uncertain international environment, protecting cultural relics that present a three-dimensional and full picture of China is essential. The relics enhance Chinese culture’s influence and contribute to building a community with a shared future for mankind.
A plan on cultural relics protection and sci-tech innovation will be released. China will continuously strengthen the basic research and interdisciplinary research to deepen the understanding of civilisation and cultural relics and improve the theoretical system of cultural relics protection.
– Wu Yuanbin, Director-General of Science and Technology for Social development
Cultural relics protection should mobilise all social forces, and integrate protection and utilisation of cultural relics into people’s work and life, and improve related laws, regulations and enforcement mechanisms.
The leading role of sci-tech innovation in cultural relics protection should be kept with strengthened basic research, accelerated breakthroughs and application of urgently needed technologies, and intensified talent training and interdisciplinary cooperation.
China will achieve new breakthroughs in the safety and protection of cultural relics, monitoring and early warning, archaeological discovery and residue analysis, structural stability evaluation of cultural relics, and rescue and protection of cultural relics.
By 2025, the safety of cultural relics will be significantly enhanced, and their protection will be improved. Meanwhile, sci-tech innovation will make great progress in the sector, with the optimised structure of cultural relics institutions. Social participation in cultural relics will continue to be invigorated, systems and capacity for cultural relics management will be preliminarily modernised. By 2035, China will build a working system for the protection and management of cultural relics in line to build China into a cultural powerhouse, and sci-tech innovation and talent cultivation will underpin China’s protection, application and research on cultural relics.
Ensuring the safety of cultural relics resources is central to the protection, and it calls for an improved cultural relics resources management system, a national database for cultural relics resources, a long-term mechanism to ensure the safety of cultural relics, and stronger administrative enforcement and oversight of cultural relics. China will strengthen basic research, push for breakthroughs in key technologies, accelerate the upgrading of special equipment, optimise the allocation of scientific and technological resources, and enhance the display of cultural relics through sci-tech means.
Major technological developments will be made in key areas such as the dating of cultural relics and analysis of DNA and organic matter from archaeological finds. Several regional archaeological sample banks are to be established to facilitate comprehensive studies and the preservation of newly unearthed artefacts. In addition, efforts will be made to enhance the capability and sci-tech levels of archaeological work, improve the protection of cultural heritage items, and management and application of revolutionary cultural relics, and stimulate the creativity of museums in showcasing cultural relics.
As reported by OpenGov Asia, China has made great achievements in scientific and technological innovation during the 13th Five-Year Plan period. As China embarks on a new journey to build a modern socialist country in all respects, sci-tech innovation will play a vital role in promoting the country’s overall development.
Since 2013, China has consistently and steadily moved up the ranks in the Global Innovation Index, establishing itself as a global innovation leader while closing in on the top 10 every year. According to the recent Global Innovation Index released by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, China moved up from 29th place in 2015 to 12th this year in the world ranking.
