China's top legislature on Saturday voted to approve UNESCO's convention on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.  

Sun Jiazheng, Chinese minister of culture, said China is rich in intangible cultural heritage, as it has 5,000-year-long civilization without interruption. However, as a developing country, China's intangible cultural heritage protection is at the verge of risk under the impact of the country's modernization drive.

He said the approval of the convention by the 11th session of the 10th National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee will make local governments and cultural organizations intensify the protection of intangible cultural heritage.

The convention on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage was passed by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on Nov. 3, 2003. By July 14, 2004, the convention has been approved by seven countries and it will go into effect after being approved by 30 countries.

With nine chapters and 40 items, the convention stipulates conception of intangible cultural heritage and regulates a nation's duties of intangible heritage protection. It also sets objective, form, condition and procedure for applying international assistance on intangible heritage protection.

The convention on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage defines the intangible cultural heritage as the practices, representations, expressions, as well as the knowledge and skills, that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. It is sometimes called living cultural heritage.

Fable, ballad, adage, music, dance, drama, shadow play, paper-cut, painting, sculpture, embroidery printing and dyeing, as well as rituals and festive events are all included in the scope of intangible cultural heritage.

Protection of intangible cultural heritage is not optimistic in China. For instance, only a few aged artists could play Nuoxi, a local drama in southern China nowadays. Shadow play, which was once popular in north China's Shannxi Province, had more than one hundred programs before 1950's, but today its program number dropped to less than 30.

Chinese government has recognized the importance and urgency of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. The Ministry of Culture has launched some projects and set up regulations in a bid to protect intangible cultural heritage. Some colleges have introduced living cultural heritage into their curriculum.

China's Kunqu opera and Guqin, or seven-stringed plucked instrument, have been proclaimed by the UNESCO as masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity respectively in 2001 and 2003.

(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2004)