China's "cultural Unit" System Study

Contemporary China is both profiting and suffering from the exhilarating yet intimidating process of urbanization, renovation, tourism exploitation, and the newly-sprung rural construction in recent years. This progress has accordingly highlighted the prominence of historical heritages, but in the mean time, like a two sided blade, tremendously threatened their preservation. The need for a fully-developed, well-organized system, together with financial and technical support, has thus come into light. The system development and its continuity will play a key role in the task of providing the financial and technical support, complementing pre-existing systems and more over, regulating the public preservation and utilization of cultural heritages.As the most authoritative preservation system concerning tangible heritages in China, the "officially protected site/entity system", established in 1956, has been proven by empirical practices to be highly effective, significant, and irreplaceable. At the same time, numerous incidences of cultural heritage damage hinted the deficiency of the system to fit into the fast-changing, complicated context of today's society. That is resulting from the lacking of both amendments and hands-on researches. This thesis focuses on the subject of the "officially protected site/entity system" itself, treating the China-specific tangible heritage preservation system as an object, appealing for both the historical and the practical end of it. Not only would this thesis weigh on the provenance and development of the system per se, but also the practical analysis of it. More specifically, this thesis intends to first comb through history, induce and analyze the concept, background, development, function and influence of the aforementioned system; then through case studies, with empirical researches from multiple angles, attempts to uncover the flaws and defects within the system; last, this thesis endeavors to borrow the methodology of system-research disciplines abroad and domestic, to establish and conceive a well-organized, complete system using elements as formal/informal constraints, and implementing mechanism.It should be further explained that the "officially protected site/entity system" is still vigorous and active, and can not be changed straight to the core in a short time. The only way to successfully supplement the system is through various academic researches, and by so doing guarantee to the most extent the safety of our national tangible heritages. This thesis, though only expressing the opinion of the author, is without doubt derived from the necessity of field work, thus wish for improving the current heritage preservation theories and management action.