​This monograph analyzes current cultural resource management, archeological heritage management, and exhibitionary practices and policies in the People’s Republic of China. Academic researchers, preservationists, and other interested parties face a range of challenges for the preservation of the material past as rapid economic and social changes continue in China. On the one hand, state-supported development policies often threaten and in some cases lead to the destruction of archeological and cultural sites. Yet state cultural policies also encourage the cultivation of precisely such sites as tourism development resources. This monograph aims to bring the concepts of world heritage sites, national tourism policies, ethnic tourism, and museum display together for a general cultural heritage audience. It focuses on a central issue: the tensions between a wide range of interest groups: cultural anthropologists and archeologists, tourism officials, heritage proponents, economic development proponents, a new class of private rich with the means to buy artifacts, and a fragmented regulatory system. Behind all of them lies the political role of heritage in China, also addressed in this monograph.

This book offers new approaches and insights into the relationships between heritage tourism and notions of modernity, identity building and sustainable development in China. It demonstrates that the role of the state, politics, institutional arrangements and tradition have a considerable impact on perceptions of these notions. The volume contributes to current debates on tradition and modernity; the study of heritage tourism; the negotiated power between stakeholders in tourism planning and policy-making and the study of China’s society. The approach and findings of the book are of value to those interested in the continuities and changes in Chinese society and to graduate students and researchers in tourism, cultural studies and China studies.

​This monograph analyzes current cultural resource management, archeological heritage management, and exhibitionary practices and policies in the People’s Republic of China. Academic researchers, preservationists, and other interested parties face a range of challenges for the preservation of the material past as rapid economic and social changes continue in China. On the one hand, state-supported development policies often threaten and in some cases lead to the destruction of archeological and cultural sites. Yet state cultural policies also encourage the cultivation of precisely such sites as tourism development resources. This monograph aims to bring the concepts of world heritage sites, national tourism policies, ethnic tourism, and museum display together for a general cultural heritage audience. It focuses on a central issue: the tensions between a wide range of interest groups: cultural anthropologists and archeologists, tourism officials, heritage proponents, economic development proponents, a new class of private rich with the means to buy artifacts, and a fragmented regulatory system. Behind all of them lies the political role of heritage in China, also addressed in this monograph.

​This volume explores China’s cultural heritage ideology and policies from three interrelated perspectives: the State and World Heritage tourism; cultural heritage tourism at undesignated sites, and the cultural politics of museums and collections. Something of a cultural heritage designation craze is happening in China. This is new within even the last five to ten years. Officials at many levels now see heritage preservation as a means for commoditizing their regions. They are devoting new resources and attention to national and international heritage designations. Thus, addressing cultural heritage politics in a nation dedicated to designation is an important project, particularly in the context of a rapidly growing economy. This volume is also important because it addresses a very wide range of cultural heritage, providing an excellent sample of case studies: historic vernacular urban environments, ethnic tourism, scenic tourism, pilgrimage as tourism, tourism and economic development, museums, border heritage, underwater remains, and the actual governance and management of the sites. This volume is an outstanding introduction to cultural heritage issues in China while contributing to Chinese studies for those with greater knowledge of the area.

Heritage Politics in China: The Power of the Past studies the impact of heritage policies and discourses on the Chinese state and Chinese society. It sheds light on the way Chinese heritage policies have transformed the narratives and cultural practices of the past to serve the interests of the present. As well as reinforcing a collective social identity, heritage in China has served as an instrument of governance and regulation at home and a tool to generate soft power abroad. Drawing on a critical analysis of heritage policies and laws, empirical case studies and interviews with policymakers, practitioners, and local communities, the authors off er a comprehensive perspective on the role that cultural heritage plays in Chinese politics and policy. They argue that heritage-making appropriates international, national, and local values, thereby transforming it into a public good suitable for commercial exploitation. By framing heritage as a site of cooperation, contestation, and negotiation, this book contributes to our understanding of the complex nature of heritage in the rapidly shifting landscape of contemporary China. Heritage Politics in China: The Power of the Past is essential reading for academics, researchers and students in the fi elds of heritage studies, cultural studies, Asian studies, anthropology, tourism and politics.

This edited volume focuses on heritage discourse and practice in China today as it has evolved from the 'heritage turn' that can be dated to the 1990s. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches to regionally and topically diverse case studies, the contributors to this volume show how particular versions of the past are selected, (re)invented, disseminated and consumed for contemporary purposes. These studies explore how the Chinese state utilises heritage not only for tourism, entertainment, educational and commercial purposes, but also as part of broader political strategies on both the national and international stage. Together, they argue that the Chinese state employs modes of heritage governance to construct new modernities while strengthening collective national identity in support of both its political legitimacy and its claim to status as an international superpower. The authors also consider ways in which state management of heritage is contested by some stakeholders whose embrace of heritage has a different purpose and meaning.

The growth of the number and scale of Chinese museums in the 21st century, from about 1,400 at the turn of the century to over 5,000 to date, reflects the government’s Museum Development Plan for 2011-2020 to open one museum per 250,000 inhabitants, with the goal of attracting one billion visitors at the end of the decade. It is not just the numbers but the speed of development of Chinese museums that takes our breath away—with nearly one new museum per day being opened or expanded in this huge country. What are the motivations for the rapid development of museums in China? How is the public responding? Who pays for these museums and how? What has been the impact of china’s urbanization? How do Chinese museums balance education, scientific research, social cohesion, cultural diplomacy and tourism both internal and external? These are issues that continue to be discussed and debated among western museum professionals in the context of our 200-year history of modern museology. How are these debates evolving in China, which has its own history of museology over that same period from colonialism to communism and from isolation to opening up to the world? This book explores these issues while introducing English-language readers to a sample of the new Chinese museums in case studies and photographs. To accomplish this goal, Lord Cultural Associates partnered with the Chinese Museums Association who engaged leading Chinese museologists, museum directors, academics and architects to provide chapters and case studies on the history of museums in China, on evolving national museum policies, museum exhibitions and cultural diplomacy, the role of private museums, and the impact of museums on society. The four sections of this book build our knowledge of the roles of China’s museums through social and political changes, the systems of governance, the complex relationships between private and public sectors and many levels of government. Section One places the current building boom in context. Section Two addresses how China’s rapid urbanization has fueled the museum building boom, framed it, formed it and in some cases financed it. Section Three analyzes how Chinese exhibitions are tools for cultural diplomacy and key elements of soft power The six case studies in Section Four provide perspectives on the diversity of innovative approaches in the sector. Museum Development in China --- a beautiful, full-color book --- is the product of an international collaboration to discover how much East and West can learn from each other about museum roles, our publics, how we preserve, what we conserve, and our future sustainability—even as we marvel at the accomplishments of China’s museum building boom.