Zhou Heping, vice-minister of culture, said the money will be used for establishing a database and eco-system for folk and ethnic cultural heritage and financing folk artists engaged in passing on cultural heritage.

The ministry set up a protection work team on Jan. 3, and invited well-known scholars to be consultants, Zhou said.

The ministry will work out an overall plan for the program and push forward passing relevant laws, and support projects with high cultural value in provinces and regions, Zhou said.

In the 1950s China started investigation and research on cultural heritage, Zhou said, and since 1979, a total of 50,000 workers have joined a national project to collect folk literary and art works.

The project has so far collected 3.02 million folk songs, 7.48 million sayings, 1.84 million folk tales and 350 kinds of folk operas with over 10,000 scripts, as well as more than 290,000 folksongs and dances. A total of five billion words on folk culture heritage have been found in written Chinese materials.

China has also started evaluation and application for oral and intangible heritage, through close cooperation with the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization.

The Chinese Kunqu opera has been listed as one of the first "masterpieces of oral and intangible cultural heritage of humanity."

Wu Bing'an, a professor with Liaoning University, who has been working in the field for 50 years, said China still needs strict standards and better management for its cultural heritage protection.

(Xinhua News Agency January 21, 2003)