China’s Cultural Heritage Protection Achieves Remarkable Results

June 13 is the Cultural and Natural Heritage Day. On that day, China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration announced a number of progress updates in Wuhan, showing that work on the protection, inheritance, and utilization of cultural heritage has continued to advance in recent years. The report noted that the threeyear action plan for the protection of covered bridges has improved the preservation status of 2,193 covered bridges nationwide; the fourth national cultural relics census has entered its final stage; the major project “Archaeology of China” is being advanced in parallel with the Chinese Civilization Origins Project; the number of registered museums nationwide has reached 7,188, and in the past five years they have received a cumulative total of more than 4 billion visitors. At the same time, the protection of intangible cultural heritage has also been strengthened. By the end of 2025, China had 1,557 nationallevel representative intangible cultural heritage items and 3,994 nationallevel representative inheritors; 14,900 intangible cultural heritage workshops had been established across the country, driving employment and income growth for more than 1.3 million people. The article also mentioned that the “Sun Bird Gold Ornament” has once again appeared at the National Museum of China, and that the number of China’s World Heritage sites and UNESCO intangible cultural heritage items continues to increase, reflecting the phased achievements of cultural heritage protection.