Gu Yucai, Director of the Cultural Relics Protection Department under the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said China's Central Government invested 149 million yuan in protecting sites on the World Heritage list in 2006.

Legislative progress has also been made on relics preservation. For example, following the Law on Protection of Cultural Relics, the Central Government and local governments have promulgated a series of laws and regulations on protection of the Great Wall and cracked down on illegal activities in areas along it.

To boost public awareness of cultural treasures, the Chinese Government has established a national "Cultural Heritage Day" to be celebrated annually on the second Saturday of June.

Some of China's world heritage sites have been over-exploited and poorly managed in recent years. In certain areas local governments have developed tourism infrastructure, but shown little interest in protecting, managing and maintaining the site.

"Their aim is understandable. But they have not grasped the meaning of world heritage. Their ignorance may end up causing damage to the cultural heritage," Sun said.

Tong Mingkang, Deputy Director of State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said China will pay more attention to protecting and managing heritage sites and will try to prevent excessive tourism, explaining that sites with serious management problems or which fail to prevent damage to their cultural relics could be struck from the list.

Lost treasures

The survey will count Chinese relics within the country, but it will not include the vast number of priceless cultural treasures that have been "lost" overseas. With the growth of the Chinese economy in recent years, however, a growing number of Chinese, both at home and overseas, have begun to retrieve cultural treasures.

More than 10 million invaluable Chinese historical and cultural treasures were "sunk into oblivion" in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia after the Opium War of 1840, and about 1 million of them are ranked in the first and second class categories of Chinese archeological objects, according to the Chinese Archeological Society.

According to UNESCO, the best way to manifest the cultural and historical value of cultural relics is to protect them at their original sites.

"The homecoming of these lost cultural relics is important not only to Chinese people, but also to all the people in the world," said Xie Chensheng, a nationally known preservationist and heritage expert.

Retrieving these historical relics lost overseas hinges chiefly on three options: buying back, demanding their return, or through donations.

The government should be the main force to rescue these national treasures, accompanied by efforts by nongovernmental channels, according to Xie.

The Special Fund for Rescuing Lost Cultural Relics from Overseas under the China Social-Cultural Development Foundation, an NGO, was founded in 2002 with the support of more than 300 experts and business people.

Already a national treasure recovery project, launched in July 2003, is aiming to rescue "lost" Chinese cultural relics and protect the country's national heritage.

To date, buying back constitutes a conventional and costly method of retrieving cultural relics as the funds for purchasing them are insufficient. Demanding their return is a tough route to take because it involves delving into a host of thorny historical issues. There have been donations, but these are few and far between.

As far as Zhang Yongnian, head of the special fund, is concerned, economic methods are the best. "We respect the ownership of cultural relics if they are in the hands of individuals and under good protection. Moreover, if the owners are willing to sell them in China, we will pay for them properly, according to the estimated value."