China ranks third worldwide for heritage sites

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, February 18, 2004

China ranks third worldwide for heritage sites

Of the 754 sites on the United Nations' World Heritage List (WHL) 29 are located in China, the third-biggest number in one country.

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Of the 754 sites on the United Nations' World Heritage List (WHL) 29 are located in China, the third-biggest number in one country.

This was revealed by Zhang Xinsheng, China's deputy minister of education and chairman of the Chinese National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), at a press conference here Tuesday.

Zhang is also the chairman of the 28th Session of the World Heritage Committee, which is to be held in Suzhou City, in east China's Jiangsu Province, June 28-July 7 this year.

According to Zhang, 582 of the WHL sites are places of cultural heritage, 149 are places of natural heritage, and 23 are mixed. OfChina's 29 sites, 21 are cultural, four natural and four mixed. The most famous ones are the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, MountTaishan, Mount Huangshan and Jiuzhaigou.

In 1972, UNESCO adopted the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The Convention defines sites of cultural heritage as monuments such as architectural works, artistic works and inscriptions, cave dwellings, groups of buildings which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science, and historical sites, including archaeological sites.

For the purposes of the Convention, sites of natural heritage include natural features consisting of physical and biological formations, geological and physiographical formations and precisely delineated areas, as well as the natural sites or precisely delineated natural areas.

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