Civilization-Making and its Discontents: The Venice Charter and Heritage Policies in Contemporary China

Any examination of the impact of the 1964 International

Charter for the Conservation and Preservation of Monuments

and Sites (more commonly known as the Venice Charter) on

cultural heritage preservation over the past five decades

must begin with a key caveat: this accord was strictly aimed

at the preservation of archeological sites and monuments.

This “dead stones” approach to preservation is certainly

open to critique (Logan 2002: 56). But it is important to

remember that the Venice Charter has been supplemented by

more than forty additional international and regional

conventions and accords on the nebulous topic of heritage.

In the process, the meaning and scope of this concept has

steadily expanded far beyond monumental and historical built

space and archeological sites to include parks, gardens and

urban industrial zones, natural landscapes such as

mountains, rivers, and forests, human-impacted natural

spaces that range from terraced rice fields in Bali and

Nepal to the Trinity nuclear test site in New Mexico, and,

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most recently, intangible cultural practices. Thus, in

surveying the bewildering state of heritage today (is

anything not potentially heritage?), both the significance

of the Venice Charter and critiques aimed at this should be

considered in the context of the time in which the Charter

was written.

First of all, given that it was drafted and approved at

the Second International Congress of Architects and

Technicians of Historic Monuments, the Venice Charter

emphasizes both conservation and restoration of monuments

and sites. It is thus largely a technical document. Being

so, the Charter describes a set of principles for material

conservation it implies are universal, not surprising given

the time in which it was written, which was arguably the

height of the post-war Modernist movement in built space.

Secondly, this was a profoundly progressive document,

particularly in its insistence on the primacy of in situ

principles (Articles 1 and 7), acceptance that preserved

monuments should have a “socially useful purpose” (Article

5), and recognition that at monuments and sites with

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multiple temporal layers of built space, an original or

first layer should not automatically be privileged (Article

11).

However, the Venice Charter rests on a foundational value

claim masquerading as a fact, one which, fifty years on,

still resonates with preservationists: namely, that “people

are becoming more and more conscious of the unity of human

values and regard ancient monuments as a common heritage”

(Venice Charter, 1). This is an aspirational claim borrowed

wholesale from the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human

Rights and applied to material culture. It is not that some

people do not indeed accept this claim of a collection of

heritage sites that belong to all the people of the world by

dint of a shared humanity, or believe in “the unity of human

values”; it is that those who do so are primarily privileged

elites who identify as transnational citizens of the world

and hence assume they are above (or beyond) the

particularities of culture, as sources of human values

(Goodale 2009: 86-88; Merry 2007: 73-74). If we accept that

culture is the source of human values, and that not all such

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values are consistent with international rights accords,

then it is not surprising that some rights scholars and

activists view some aspects of some cultures as the enemy of

rights (Goodale 2009: 89). However, to assume that one has

transcended or overcome the parochialism of a culture does

not place one ‘beyond culture’. Instead, this merely becomes

a substitute for culture: the a belief in the universality

and hence singularity of human values and rights is itself a

values of a universal set of rights as culture (Cowan 2001:

11). In the world at large, anthropological evidence

demonstrates that that most people do not identify with

humanity but with specific humans ranging from family and

friends to community, nation, and faith, do not feel at home

‘in the world’ but in specific places in the world, and do

not find the possession of a parochial set of values

especially problematic. This is the reality of heritage, be

this it performative or material. Some degree of cultural

particularism and hence exclusion is necessary for heritage

sites and cultural practices to have an initial meaning that

makes them legible, visible, and choose-able (or not). In

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other words, a monument, site, or practice built or

performed without any specific purpose is meaning-less

without a defined audience. This illustrates the underlying

paradox of universalism: without a particularist and

exclusionary starting point, a cultural object or practice

cannot be(come) universal. In other words, universal

aspirations depend on a culturally specific position. This,

after all, is the first rule of writing: if we do not write

with a particular audience in mind, we are writing not to

everyone but no one.

The Venice Charter’s response to the realities of

particularism versus the aspirations of univeralism is quite

striking: while asserting the universal value of specific

human values and monuments, it never defines what

constitutes a ‘monument’. Perhaps this seemed a non-question

at the time, since the Charter was drafted in Venice, which

was (and is) a shining example of monumental space. But to

assume meaning is not the same as capturing meaning. If we

look to etymology, ‘monument’ is derived from the Latin

monere, ‘to remind’ or ‘to warn’. In Middle English

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monumentarium describes a burial site. The Oxford English

Dictionary (online edition) defines a monument as, “A statue,

building, or other structure erected to commemorate a

notable person or an event”; but also as well as “A

building, structure, or site that is of historical

importance or interest” and, “An outstanding, enduring, and

memorable example of something” (OED 2014). When used as an

adjective (‘monumental’), the term evokes the colossal and

the extravagant, be this size, height, or scope. But how can

a (tangible) monument or (intangible) monumental event or

experience in any way be fully inclusive and hence either

universally applicable or of value to all people,

everywhere? Moreover, if human values are indeed becoming

the same everywhere, how can all monuments be of value,

unless value is measured by a set of arbitrary categories

such as age (the older the better), spectacularity (the

bigger, higher, and more monumental the better) or, as

Shelly Errington has suggested (1998: 11-112), by durability

(stones, bricks, and wood trump other building materials)?

If what counts as a monument worthy of preservation for all

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of humanity to enjoy is ultimately a matter of the materials

used to construct this object, what remains of universal

value?

The postmodern response to this dilemma is to confidently

claim that the framers of the Venice Charter, like other

proponents of metanarratives, were wrong to assert a

universal value claim. Indeed, the entire premise of world

heritage, from a postmodern view, is naïve. In a PoMo world,

monuments, sites, or for that matter cultural practices can

mean anything to anyone. After all, why value an original

meaning over other meanings?

Presented thus, this perspective appears to be profoundly

inclusive and democratic. Yet it is not only logically

flawed (how can anything mean something different to

literally everyone?) but intellectually dubious, as it not

only de-privileges the original intent of a site or

practice, it ignores this intentionality through an

unreflective non-remembering, which is a direct negation of

the original purpose of a memorial: to monere. Constantine’s

Arch along the Via Triumphalis in Rome was constructed by

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the Roman Senate for a specific purpose: to memorialize

Constantine’s victory over Maxentius on October 28, 312 AD.

The fact that it has taken on other meanings, such as a

requisite photo certifying one’s presence as a tourist in

Rome, as an iconic backdrop in many Italian and American

movies, and as a prototype for other built spaces designed

not to memorialize but to monumentalize, such as Washington,

DC’s Union Station, does not alter this the Arch’s

historical truth. But Rather this is a truth is accessible

to all because of the Arch’s material existence in brick and

marble instead of, say, wattle and mud-based daub, arguably

humanity’s most universal building material.

The postmodern insistence that all facts are mere

contingencies also flattens out cultural practices, leading

not to alternative meanings but rather to bland and banal

spectacle: Mardi Gras not as a prelude to fasting and

reflection for Catholics of a particular cultural tradition

but Spring Break on steroids with a bit of ‘Girls Gone Wild’

tossed into the mix, Cinco de Mayo as an American drinking

night, and of course St. Patrick’s Day, when performative

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Irish abound, green beer flows, and faith takes on new

meanings.

The Unavoidable Politics of Heritage

In a roundabout way, I am arguing that the 1964 Venice

Charter, placed within its proper historical context, is not

to blame for what has followed – a wholesale transnational

embrace of ‘heritage’ as a moral good (to have some is to be

someone) that is quantifiable (the more one has, the better

one is). What began as an attempt to protect one type of

built space (stone, brick, or masonry structures that have

specific historical meanings) and a particular type of

scientific practice (archeological excavations) has been

transformed into a movement that claims to protect the

material and cultural heritage of all the world’s peoples.

If in 1964 the drafters of the Venice Charter could assert

that people of the world “regard ancient monuments as a

common heritage”, fifty years later UNESCO proclaims that

“World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the

world, irrespective of the territory on which they are

located” (UNESCO 2014). Once defined as monumental material

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culture, heritage is now asserted to be, “essential to

personal and collective identity and necessary for self-

respect” (Lowenthal 2005: 81).

If, as hHeritage proponents assert that, “legacies of

both nature and culture belong not simply to their places

and peoples of origin but to all the earth and its

inhabitants” (Lowenthal 2005: 85) therefore implying that,

their maintenance and preservation appear to beare an

ethical responsibility of all as well. How to identify these

sites is of course the key issue. The classification of

preservation-worthy sites is often portrayed as a matter of

using “objective and neutral scientific evidence to avoid

the politicization of decision-making processes and to

enhance compliance” (Maswoud 2000: 357).

Yet the heritage process is clearly and unavoidably

political, given that actions in regard to heritage are

outcomes of choices made about about the past heritage.

Leaving aside the question of the assumed neutrality of

science, decisions to classify a place as a heritage site,

be this local, regional, national, or an example of world

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heritage, require alternative sites that are not heritage

(since otherwise everything would be heritage-worthy and

hence the heritage label would have no worth). The heritage

process is thus by its nature an intervention into how the

past is portrayed and understood as well a policy decision

that influences how an existing built environment is

conceptualized and used. Far from being simply a

genealogical exercise in preserving and remembering a

personal past, heritage has become an increasingly important

element in the larger project of modernization, which is

premised on transcending a generic past (not my past or your

past but ‘the past') as a means of continuing on a pathway

of future progress. But modernization itself is premised on

a profound contradiction: the past is simultaneously

portrayed as a repository of traditions that must be

repudiated and overcome and as an archive for state-directed

and state-constructed stories about the present. We are

simultaneously supposed to transcend traditional thoughts

and practices (so that universal rights may reign) while

selectively preserving material examples of former

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civilizations (so that heritage may exist).

The net result is that aesthetics trump facticity when

heritage is extracted from history. For example, Chinese

authorities currently are conducting a national heritage

campaign focused on managing to create as much as to

preserve the past. As part of this effort, authorities in

dozens of Chinese cities have constructed historic ‘old

towns’ (fanggu, ‘copies of ancient places’), usually

thematic shopping areas modeled on Ming or Qing Dynasty

streets that suggest a utopian pre-modern China of small

shops and street vendors (Anagnost 1997: 107). In the United

States, similar old towns and festival marketplaces have

become increasingly common since the 1980s (Shepherd 2008).

These examples illustrate how cultural heritage is not

synonymous with history; it is instead a selective and

highly controlled process of portraying the past (Logan

2009: 34).

Saving Culture from Civilization

In 1962, two years before the Venice Charter, the first

World Conference on National Parks was held in Seattle, 12

Washington. Attended by representatives from sixty-three

states, the final report of this conference emphasized

preservation, recreation, and wildlife protection (Mason

2004: 74-75). Delegates recommended that the International

Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) draw up a list of

critical areas to preserve,; donor countries link

development funding to park development and conservation

measures;, and an international commission on park planning

be established (Adams 1962: 380). They also noted with

concern the threat an expanding world population posed to

nature. Some speakers proposed a system of spatial

segregation to protect critical areas from people. For

example, Enrique Beltràn, a delegate from Mexico, suggested

a model of nature preserves separated into three zones: a

“general relaxation” zone for tourists, an “intermediate

zone” that would have no facilities, and a core restricted

zone that would be accessible only to the scientific

community (Beltràn in Adams 1962: 39).

This conference was followed in 1964 by U.S. Congressional

passage of the American Wilderness Act (PL 85-577). This law

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mandates federal protection of designated lands devoid of

permanent human habitation, defining these as sites where

“the earth and the community of life are untrammeled by man,

where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (quoted

in Nash 1967: 5). This law codified a geo-pious perspective

on wilderness as a space for people to visit to transcend

the ordinary, experience the vastness of nature, and

encounter a mythical Eden (Graber 1976: 11). This ignores

the enormous human effort that is required to make nature

look ‘natural’, from trail construction and soil erosion

projects to the construction of sanitation systems and the

management of forests.

The following year the Johnson Administration organized a

White House conference at which a world heritage trust was

proposed as a means of identifying and protecting the most

important cultural sites in the world for the benefit of

current and future members of the “international citizenry”

(quoted in Slatyer 1983: 138). UNESCO established a working

committee to examine this issue in 1970, which lead to the

1972 World Heritage Convention. The WHC took the Venice

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Charter’s suggestion of a common humanity as a starting

point for its most important claims, that ‘world heritage’

consists of any site, building or monument with “outstanding

universal value” (Article 1) and that determining such value

is achievable with scientific, economic, and technical

studies – although how this would be determined is left

unanswered (Article 24).

A generation later Our Creative Diversity (1995) was published

by the World Commission on Culture and Development. This

remains the core UNESCO policy document on cultural

heritage. This report asserts that not only heritage sites

but also cultural practices must be preserved because any

loss to the world’s diverse body of material culture harms

the world’s “reservoir of knowledge” (UNESCO 1995: 179-181).

And yet diversity is not, in fact, the focus of this

document, although it is harshly critical of what it terms

an “all-pervasive” homogenization of culture (UNESCO 1995:

16). Indeed not all of ‘culture’ (tangible or intangible) is

to be protected, but only those practices that demonstrate

tolerance, pluralism, and most importantly a “global ethics”

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of equality, democracy, and human rights (UNESCO 1995: 15-

16). Indeed, while defending a right to (particular)

cultural values, the authors of Our Creative Diversity also assert

that “universalism is the fundamental principle of a global

ethics” (1995: 46). This ignores the fact that values such

as tolerance and equality are not universal, but the

particularistic values of specific groups, most notably

secular humanists. Cultural differences apparently should be

celebrated and protected only as long as these do not differ

from the institutional values of UNESCO.

Despite this apparent contradiction, the authors of Our

Cultural Diversity state that each society must “assess the

nature and precariousness of its heritage resources on its

own terms” in order to decide what uses to make of these in

“the spirit of development” (UNESCO 1995: 176) while

guarding against allowing cultural heritage to be

transformed into a “tourist resource” (ibid, 184).

Underlying this unease with tourism is an assumption that

cultural practices and heritage sites must be protected from

market forces that might encourage the commodification of

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both tangible and intangible cultural forms.

To do so, UNESCO defines the spatial layout of a heritage

site as a series of zones, ranging from a culturally

pristine core to an ‘impure’ outer zone of commerce and

local life. This is made clear in UNESCO’s most recent

operational guidelines for world heritage sites, which

stipulate that clearly delineated boundaries and a buffer

zone must be established at each site by state authorities

to protect it from “human encroachments” (UNESCO 2008 [b]:

26), despite the fact that many such sites are in fact built

space within a matrix of historical development. (UNESCO

2008 [b]: 26). This demarcation of space is promoted by

UNESCO as a universal principle of preservation method,

despite its own claimed emphasis on cultural diversity.

Indeed, UNESCO planning guidelines assert that a site holds

universal value only if its cultural values are “truthfully

and credibly expressed” through factors such as form,

function, setting, and materiality (UNESCO 2008 [b]: 22).

Furthermore, a site can only be evaluated “within the

cultural contexts to which it belongs” (ibid, 21), although

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it is supposed to be evaluated according to universal

principles. This illustrates the central role that

archeological principles of excavation and presentation have

had in how heritage has been conceptualized since the Venice

Charter. Because the Venice Charter’s focus was on the

conservation and restoration of historic monuments, an

emphasis on in situ principles to preserve the archeological

record was quite logical. However, since 1964 the scope of

tangible heritage protection has been extended far beyond

ancient monuments. Despite this expansion of the subject

matter of heritage protection, tangible heritage continues

to be defined primarily in archeological terms, which

resituates any type of material culture defined as heritage

into an archeological site, and hence primarily important

because of its links with the past, not the present. The net

outcome is a UNESCO policy focus which leads to a

fossilization of built space and eradication of social

action at places classified as world heritage sites.

What impact has this preservation model had in cultural

environments which have no deep traditions of spatial

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organization premised on stark differences between the

sacred and the profane, the temple and the market, or

‘culture and ‘nature’? And to what extent does this model

depend on a relatively weak civil society and illiberal

state to maximize its success? The case of China provides

one answer.

Tourism, Heritage, and Civilization-Building in China

‘Heritage’ is actually a relatively recent concept in

China, reflected in the state creation of a neologism

(yichan) only in 1982 to describe this. This took the place

of cultural ‘relic’ (wenwu), which refers specifically to

material culture, in official discourse. The country’s first

archaeological research institute was established at Beijing

University in 1925, and the first legal regulations of

cultural objects were not issued until 1930 (Murphy 1994;

Zhuang, 1989). This was followed in 1931 by the “Statute for

the Preservation of Scenic Spots, Points of Historical

Importance, and Articles of Historical, Cultural, and

Artistic Value” (Gruber 2007: 272). The first formal attempt

to categorize China’s material heritage occurred in 1948,

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shortly before the collapse of the Nationalist government,

when professors at Qinghua University in Beijing published a

list of 450 sites under the title of A Brief List of Important

Architectural Sites in China. Following the establishment of the PRC

in 1949, communist authorities sought to reshape history,

particularly in urban areas, through the selective

destruction of cultural sites and their replacement with new

symbols of state power (Wu 2005). For example, Beijing’s

city walls, which dated from the Ming Dynasty, were

destroyed during construction of the city’s first subway

line between 1965 and 1969, while historic areas to the

south of the Forbidden City were demolished in 1958-1959

during the construction of the Great Hall of the People and

expansion of Tiananmen Square.

Although the State Council issued a decree in May 1950

that called for the codification of historical sites,

artifacts, and endangered animals, the first national

heritage regulations were not issued until November 1961

(Zhuang 1989: 104). This decree created the category of

‘National Cultural Relic Protection Units’ (Zhongdian Wenwu

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Baohu Danwei), which listed 180 such sites, and provided

funding for restoration and preservation. These listed sites

were divided into two categories, ‘ancient’ (tombs,

grottoes, buildings, and stone carvings) and ‘revolutionary’

(Liu 1983: 97).

This initial attempt to create a national cultural

heritage system was disrupted by the outbreak of the

Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), during which youthful Red

Guards were encouraged by Communist Party Chairman Mao

Zedong to destroy the ‘four olds’ (customs, culture, habits

and ideas). During this decade of upheaval thousands of

historic sites including temples, churches, mosques, and

other buildings were looted, desecrated, demolished and, in

many cases, and turned into warehouses and other public

buildings.

After a modicum of political stability was restored

following the resettlement of radicalized youths in rural

areas, the central government established the State

Administrative Bureau of Cultural Relics and Archeological

Data in 1973. But it was not until after Chairman Mao’s

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death in 1976 and the return to power by pragmatists

associated with Deng Xiaoping that cultural heritage was

codified in the 1982 Law on the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the

People’s Republic of China. This law establishes guidelines for

the general categorizationcategorizing,

excavationexcavating, and protection of sites. protection

and It also expanded the number of listed “cultural relics

protection units” from x? to 242, which included caves,

steeles, tombs, buildings, and revolutionary sites (Liu

1983: 97). It also explicitly links heritage preservation

and political objectives, asserting that material heritage

protection should improve scientific research, support

patriotism and revolution, and promote socialist culture

(Zhuang 1989: 105; Sofield & Li 1998: 370-371). In other

words, preserving the past is not an end in itself, but a

means to furthering the development of a national

consciousness and socialist values.

Three years later, in January 1985, the Chinese

government signed the World Heritage Convention. The

potential contradiction between a state policy that defined

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heritage in political and economic terms and UNESCO’s

emphasis on a collective global heritage that transcended

state boundaries was easily reconciled by Article Four of

this Convention, which explicitly recognizes that “the duty

of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation,

presentation and transmission to future generations of the

cultural and natural heritage referred to in Articles 1 and

2 and situated on its territory, belongs primarily to that State”

(UNESCO 1972, emphasis added). Moreover, heritage could even

be reconciled with Maoism, by defining what should be

preserved in the words of the Chairman himself: “Make the

past serve the present and foreign things serve China” (Liu

1983: 21).

As of 2014 China has forty-five UNESCO-designated World

Heritage sites, fifty-two additional sites awaiting approval

on the “tentative” list, and approximately 1,200 national

heritage sites. These fall under the domain of the State

Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH). Below the

national level, the total number of officially designated

and potential heritage sites is staggering. China has

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approximately 9,300 recognized heritage sites at the

provincial level and upwards of 60,000 sites at the

municipal or county level. It also has the fastest-growing

museum industry in the world. Between 1980 and 2000, the

number of museums in the PRC increased from 365 to 1,353,

doubled again by 2008, and by 2012 totaled 3,866 (The

Economist, 2014).

This data illustrates how China’s transformative economic

policies have not just produced enormous material changes in

people’s lives but also a dramatic transformation of

cultural industries, new investments in preservation, and

the invention of a neologism (yichan) to promote a concept

(‘heritage’) that had not previously existed. What is behind

this national campaign to promote and preserve the past, a

campaign guided by a political party that in previous

generations actively supported the destruction of this same

past?

Cultural Heritage and Moral Citizenship

As already noted, heritage programs, policies, and

campaigns are inherently political, focusing as they do on

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shaping particular narratives about the past for

contemporary purposes. Rather than being the outcome of a

neutral process of collecting important cultural objects

and/or sites, ‘heritage’ is produced for specific reasons

through deliberate actions and particular choices (Ashworth

1994: 27).

This is the case in China. Just as an official discourse

of multiculturalism serves to depoliticize political claims

of cultural differences among the Han majority and

state=recognized ethnic minorities (Gladney 2004), heritage

projects tend to emphasize a generalized past as elements of

an apolitical and generic ‘Chinese’ heritage (Hevia

2001:222). The Maoist intent during the Cultural Revolution

to eradicate the past has been replaced by a focus on

molding material culture into a leisure commodity, which,

however, clearly carries political intentions. In other

words, the erasure not of the past but of historically

specific contexts of particular aspects of the past now

guides the heritage industries in China.

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Chinese State authorities’ enthusiastic acceptance of the

UNESCO project of world heritage fits a state and party

projection of a “landscape of nostalgia” (Oakes 1997: 42).

Long gone are revolutionary calls to transcend four thousand

years of history, replaced by state exhortations that the

protection of material culture demonstrates citizens’ moral

excellence (aihu wenwu, nide meide). This shift links

contemporary Han Chinese society to an imagined past of

seamless Han unity as well as to non-Han cultural regions of

the current PRC as an historic “China” (Denton 2005: 570).

This is a heritage process that in effect produces a fictive

“China”, a seamless unified nation of like-minded citizens

spanning thousands of years of history.

While the Communist Party now emphasizes individual

success, wealth accumulation, and the efficacy of market

forces rather than collective efforts, equality, and

socialism, the underlying goal of state policies, one which

precedes the People’s Republic and can be traced back to the

1911 Revolution, is modernization, not just in a tangible,

material sense but also in an intangible spiritual (jingshen)

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sense. This reflects a foundational ethical perspective on

what it means to be modern and Chinese that transcends

political differences between the Chinese Nationalist Party,

rulers of the Republic of China (1911-1949) and the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP). Both have sought to achieve the

central goal of the founder of modern China, Sun Yatsen

(1866-1925) and his Revolutionary League (tongmenghui), the

predecessor of the Nationalist Party: the modernization of

China with, to borrow the language of the Communist Party,

“Chinese characteristics”, based on maintaining the essence

(ti) of what it means to be Chinese.

Beginning with Deng Xiaoping, national Communist Party

authorities have hollowed out socialism, eliminated class

struggle as a political tool, and embraced ‘the market’ as a

basis for improved living standards, within however a

discourse of material and spiritual ‘civilization’ (wenming)

building. In other words, while the Communist Party has

overseen the gutting of communism-in-practice and the

development of market-based production and allocation

systems, authorities have sought to limit the extent to

27

which market forces shape social and moral behavior. These

policies are remarkably similar to those of reformers in the

last years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), who advocated

zhonghua xiyong, utilizing European technology, ideas, and

products while maintaining a spiritual-cultural essence of

‘Chineseness’ (Dynon 2008: 86). Indeed, since 1982 the

central government has promoted a “Spiritual Civilization

Campaign” (jingshen wenhua yundong), designed to boost public

morality, patriotism, cultural appreciation, self-

discipline, and ‘right thinking’. Linking these together is

the term ‘civilization’.

Unlike in English, ‘civilized’ or ‘civilization’

(wenming) has not disappeared from public use in China as

society has advanced materially. Quite the opposite:

exhortations to be civilized, act civilized, and live as a

member of a civilized household and society fill the public

sphere, ranging from banners, billboards, and television to

in parks, restrooms, rail stations, and other public venues.

In the context of contemporary China, Michel Foucault’s

dictum that the disciplining of the self becomes

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increasingly invisible in modernizing societies has little

relevance (Anagnost 1994).

This civilization campaign is reflects the century old

debate among Chinese intellectuals about how to be

simultaneously modern and Chinese. The term itself is a

cultural borrowing from Meiji Japan (Friedman 2004). Like

the Japanese bunmei, wenming carries two distinct

connotations, one mental/spiritual and the other material

(Anagnost 1997: 82), which in turn reflects a split between

“Eastern” (dongfang) and “Western” (xifang) orientations (Lee

1999: 44). For the former, wenming refers to what is usually

described in public discourse as ‘five thousand years of

Chinese civilization’, the assumption that “China” has

existed in a coherent and linear form longer than any

society in history. But this term also describes an always-

becoming civil society that signals not an unbroken historical

narrative but an emerging present and future rooted in the

flux of modernity. This is a starkly different view of

society than the one imagined by American proponents of

‘civil society’ and ‘good governance’. For the latterIn the

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American paradigm, ‘civil society’ is the oft-stated goal of

development programs aimed at promoting democracy, human

rights, and the rule of law. Proponents of this perspective

believe that a civil society (that is, a sector of non-state

organizations and institutions) is crucial to check the

power of the state, cultivate tolerance, and guarantee

material security for its members. In contrast, the Chinese

term jingshen wenming (a ‘spiritual’-‘moral’ civilization)

describes a society of productive citizens who understand

how to check their individual behavior so as to assist state

leaders with the development of a materially and spiritually

modern society (Friedman 2004: 691). It thus communicates

both a historical basis of development and a contemporary

sense of modernity and Westernization (Anagmost 1997: 75).

This ideal civil society is guided by the moral

attributes of suzhi (quality) and wenhua (culture). To

possess a high level of suzhi is to be simultaneously modern

and Chinese, while to possess wenhua is to be cognizant of

the qualities that make Chinese unique and not simply

‘Westernized’. Those who possess proper quality and culture

30

are deemed capable of self-governance while those with low

quality are targets for improvement (Tomba 2009: 595).

‘Quality’ and ‘culture’ are not just attributes of the Party

but more importantly of an emerging middle and upper class.

No longer suspect members of revolutionary China,

intellectuals, capitalists, and the petty bourgeoisie are

now framed by Party officials as models for a modern China.

Moreover, these beneficiaries of social and economic reforms

do not necessarily contest either the state or the Party

because they are part of the state and Party moral project

of development. This is also the case for heritage and

tourism. From a Chinese Communist Party CCP perspective,

there is no contradiction between preserving heritage sites

and promoting tourism at these sites. This is because

tourism will presumably boost material development in areas

that lack resources other than culture. But it will also

boost (spiritual) moral development by bringing higher

quality urban residents into contact with the rural

inhabitants of many heritage sites as well as ‘lower-

quality’ urban residents on tour (Shepherd 2013).

31

In contrast to this national state focus on heritage

preservation and tourism as pedagogical tools in the

cultivation of increasingly ‘civilized’ (modern) subjects,

local authorities invest in heritage projects for very

different reasons. In the case of heritage and tourism in

China, the intended audience is clearly not global, since

fewer than 10% of the country’s annual tourists are foreign.

According to the China National Tourism Organization (CNTO),

an average of 1.6 billion domestic tourist trips are made by

PRC citizens each year, whereas foreign arrivals average 130

million (CNTO 2009). And, of this foreign sector, more than

80% are ethnic Chinese residents of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and

Macau. In other words, just over 1% (approximately 22

million) of the more than 1.7 billion annual tourist trips

in China are undertaken by people who are not ethnically Han

Chinese. Tourism in China is thus largely a Chinese

phenomenon and a return to a long tradition of travel and

pilgrimage that was disrupted between 1911 and 1976 by

revolution, war, and ideological extremism (Sofield and Li

1998: 363).

32

Meeting the demands of this enormous tourism market for

economic development reasons is the underlying goal of local

authorities that invest in heritage (Shen & Chen 2010: 72).

Since 1998 the costs of heritage management have been

shifted to provinces, municipalities, and counties as part

of a broader administrative decentralization effort. As more

and more locales compete to capture part of the domestic

tourism market as a revenue source, they seek a comparative

advantage by promoting (and in some cases reconstructing or

even creating) heritage sites.

The net result is a heritage field that is largely

unregulated. As of 2010, the State Administration of

Cultural Heritage (SACH) estimated China has more than

400,000 heritage sites, of which only approximately 15%

receive any sort of state protection (Shen & Chen 2010: 72).

Moreover, the vast majority of such support occurs at the

county or municipal level, by local authorities desperately

seeking new funding sources to make up for the decline in

revenue sharing with the national government. This, combined

with the fact that state officials in China are primarily

33

evaluated on their success in promoting economic

development, has led to widespread commercialization at

heritage sites and a focus on short-term results at the

expense of sustainable practices (Li, Wu & Cai 2008).

This has also led to domestic debates about how to manage

heritage sites. Should these be contracted out to private

entrepreneurs or should these be managed by state park

authorities? Proponents of a national park model argue that

heritage sites are public goods and as such should not be

transformed into private assets (Zhang & Zhen, 2001). Once

privatized, profit, it is argued, is emphasized over

preservation and conservation at such sites (Xu, 2003).

Yet leaving site management in the hands of local

authorities is not necessarily any better, since these must

rely on admissions revenues as their main source of funding

(Shepherd & Yu, 2013). Consequently, a common tactic is to

try to have heritage sites listed as national ‘Protected

Sites of Significant Cultural Relics’ and then petition to

have these nominated for either UNESCO world cultural

34

heritage status or national-level status, thus qualifying

for subsidies (Lü, 2008).

However, relatively few sites (approximately 1,300) have

gained this recognition. This leaves local government

agencies to borrow large sums of money to fund renovation

projects or even the wholesale reconstruction of historical

and cultural sites in an attempt to attract admissions-

paying tourists. This of course runs counter to not just the

Venice Charter but also the core principles of the World

Heritage Convention: the authenticity of a cultural heritage

site should be reflected in its original architectural form

with original building materials and building techniques

(Ruan & Lin, 2004).

Finally, decentralization also significantly impacts

future heritage sites. National heritage regulations place

responsibility for protecting new archeological findings on

local authorities. Quite predictably, development projects

may lead to the discovery of artifacts in the course of

construction. For example, twenty-one Shang Dynasty bronze

artifacts from the 11th century BCE were recently discovered

35

in a village in Shaanxi province while workers were digging

a foundation (China Daily, June 26, 2012).

Under current laws, if any material artifacts are

uncovered during construction projects, these must be

protected, using local funds. If a site is discovered on

private property the owner is responsible for its protection

(Svensson 2006: 30). Thus local governments do not

necessarily welcome potential new heritage sites because of

the costs involved in protection (Gruber 2007: 182).

Conclusion

In the context of heritage preservation, a key quandary is

the issue of responsible parties. Heritage conventions and

declarations such as the Venice Charter are agreements

between and among international organizations such as UNESCO

and nation-states, not the actual communities in which

material heritage is located. Moreover, nominations for

world heritage status can only be made through national

governments (Cleere 2001: 24). Subsequently, UNESCO

authorities do not define the nomination process and

management of sites as a joint project of local and national

36

interests, let alone those of actually existing communities.

Instead, the role of national authorities in the promotion

and definition of heritage sites is framed as technical:

state support of heritage preservation is taken as

beneficial, thus ignoring the political questions of why

certain state authorities seek world heritage status for

particular sites and what impact these projects have on

local communities and the people who inhabit these places.

One often ignored side effect of this structural issue is

that UNESCO’s emphasis on spatial segregation is most

feasible in states that have weak civil societies and

governments that utilize rule by law as opposed to the rule

of law (Lee 2007). In contrast, in states with a vibrant

civil society, large-scale heritage projects take much more

time, since citizens have the ability to contest such plans.

One striking example is the case of Pura Besakih, the most

important Hindu temple complex on the Indonesian island of

Bali. Built in the ninth century, Pura Besakih was proposed

for world heritage status by the then-authoritarian

Indonesian government in 1990. However, this application was

37

withdrawn in the face of widespread domestic opposition,

particularly by the influential National Hindu Council,

which argued that ‘heritage’ suggests a non-living site. A

decade later, the site was again proposed for world heritage

status by the newly elected democratic government. Local

activists argued that the 1972 World Heritage Convention

gives responsibility for site management to states, which

would mean ceding control of this religious site to

government authorities. The nomination was again withdrawn,

making Pura Besakih one of the few cases in which local

communities have successfully rejected world heritage status

in post-colonial states (Hitchcock and Putra 2007: 104-106).

The social fact that heritage landscapes are seldom

simply landscapes but are invariably life-scapes is often

ignored or glossed over by supporters of heritage

preservation. Instead, the most common criticism among

heritage project supporters tends to be UNESCO’s lack of

enforcement powers. For example, frustration is sometimes

shown when states fail to follow through on their site

nominations (Maswoud 2000: 360). This frustration is based

38

on the assumption that states are always unified bodies and

act in one interest, a position that has repeatedly been

shown to be open to question in recent studies of

development projects (Cf. Elyachar 2006; Zhang 2004). This

also assumes state actors act in the interest of local

residents at proposed heritage sites.

Neither of these assumptions is necessarily valid in the

case of heritage practices in the People’s Republic of

China. Not only do different parts of the bureaucratic

machinery of governance have different interests when it

comes to heritage projects, but local residents at heritage

sites may not share the same goals and desired outcomes.

Moreover, the underlying intention of UNESCO-sponsored

cultural heritage projects (the strict preservation of sites

as part of a world heritage) is at odds with the primary

purpose of these projects at both the local and national

level in China. While local authorities view material

culture as a development resource that can generate revenue

through tourism, national authorities view material culture

sites and, more broadly, ‘heritage’ as a pedagogical tool

39

for the cultivation of a common cultural moral code as a

means towards improving the overall moral and spiritual

quality of its subjects, not as world-citizens but as modern

Chinese.

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