June 14-15, 2017, the annual Chinese World Cultural Heritage Monitoring Conference was held in Chongzuo and Nanning City, both located within the Gaungxi Zhang Autonomous Region. The meeting was co-sponsored by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Cultural Office of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage (hereinafter referred to as “the Academy”). Over 120 officials and representatives from 23 cultural heritage administration of provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions, and the Macao Special Administrative Region, 49 heritage sites and 6 world cultural heritage institutions, attended the meeting. This fifth annual meeting, operating under the theme of “scientific monitoring and appropriate use”, was divided into monitoring work reports, expert lectures, theme seminars, and field research. 

After a five year effort, the Academy has yielded many results in the monitoring system, and a set of heritage monitoring theories and methods, in line with China’s national situation, has been explored. The heritage database has been established to continuously standardize and improve annual report data, as well as make heritage protection more credible. Through the construction of the heritage commissioner system and the docking of heritage personnel, management has been refined and daily monitoring responsibilities have been made more concrete all across the country; through information systems, technology and data related practices have been further protected; and through this monitoring platform, problems are better identified in real time and dealt with, and hidden dangers are better prevented.

The database was founded in 2014, when the Research Institute developed a collection of guidelines consisting of four sections: institutional and capacity building, heritage ontology protection, heritage influencing factors, and a heritage conservation management system. In 2015, every heritage site began submitting reports. As of April 2017, 38 cultural heritages from a total of 81 cultural heritage sites have completed 36 HD images, 5 million topographic maps, the collection and processing of protection zoning maps for all sites, the collection and processing of the distribution of heritage elements in 10 sites, all the basic information on heritage texts and general assembly resolutions. As a result of these accomplishments, the foundation of this database has become an important benchmark for the management and monitoring of heritage sites.

Although this work has already produced many results, there are still some areas that could use improvement. For example, on top of data inconsistencies, 38 percent of heritage sites do not have management planning. In addition, the Provincial Cultural Heritage Administration and representatives of heritage also put forward methods on how to more effectively use data, solve the problem of loss and insufficient numbers of technical personnel, and better reflect the different types of heritage within the monitoring platform in order to highlight elements bearing universal value.