National Cultural Heritage Management Studies

China is a unified multi-ethnic country and every Minzu in China contributes to the unique, colorful and long-history Chinese culture in the long process of historical development, which at the same time leaves many precious historical and cultural heritages. Culture, as the most striking feature of a Minzu, is the foundation of Minzu’s existence legitimacy and political legitimacy. In spite of disputes on the definition of "Minzu" in the academia, it is universally acknowledged that common culture is the essential characteristic of a Minzu. For a Minzu, protecting and managing the culture heritage of its own Minzu not only matters the inheritance and development of its own culture, but also concerns whether the cultural rights are respected and realized or not, which will effect, in essence, the political commitment and value orientation of the Minzu members. In this sense, the effective management of Minzu’s cultural heritage is closely related to the Minzu unity, territorial and sovereignty integrity, political stability, economic development as well as social stability. In other words, the full realization of Minzu’s cultural rights constitutes the basic element of political legitimacy of the multi-ethnic country.At present, the management of Minzu’s cultural heritage is conducted by the local government of heritage area through implementation of policy and function of Minzu’s cultural heritage, a two-dimensional path. It corresponds to administrative hierarchical organization, reflecting the considerations of structure——functionalist design. Policy of Minzu’s cultural heritage is a vital part of Minzu policy. Moreover, to optimize the management of Minzu’s cultural heritage relies on the rational formulation and effective implementation of Minzu policy. China’s current Minzu’s cultural heritage management and design system is that the central government designs the "meta-policy" which is guidance for Minzu policy in the nation wide, and the local government implements the policies and design new policies according to its own situation. Rationality and validity of Minzu policy is the basis of its political legitimacy, meanwhile the rationality is determined by the paradigm of Minzu theory. The theoretical paradigm has played a decisive role in the effective implementation of Minzu policy.Rationality of Minzu policy determines its effectiveness; meanwhile political legitimacy is the basis and standard of rationality and validity of Minzu policy. The rational Minzu theory and policy will be supported and welcomed by the people from ethnic minorities, then they will maintain a high degree of identity with CPC and the country and such identity will become their conscious awareness and behavior. In China, there are no special administrative regulations and management rules for the protection and management of cultural heritage until now, it still belongs to legislative gaps."Ethnocentricity","assimilationist" and "cultural nihilism" which appeared along with power politics and hegemonism cause great disturbance to current Minzu policy and the management of cultural heritage in China. At the same time,"Ethnic nationalism" trigged by rampant individualism and freedom exacerbates the opposition identity between nation and Minzu under the influence of three forces mentioned above. Therefore, such non-Marxist Minzu policy exacerbates the management of Minzu’s cultural heritage as well as theoretical guidance, which exerts negative impact on the management of cultural heritage.In the current design of China’s constitutional system, the local government is no doubt the main body of the implementation of Minzu policy. Under the background of lax in regulatory system and lack in agents and democratic political context, the opportunist motives and the short-sighted behavior of local government can easily lead to variability behavior of public choice by groups, then produce the subjective intent of the policy lapse, and cause "the government failure" by public interest dislocation, offside or absence, which will be bound to weaken the credibility of the government and detriment the government authority as well as political legitimacy. The administrative tools such as organizational tools, regulatory tools and economic tools taken by traditional administrative model are the technical means based on efficiency orientation. Because of too much emphasis on technical rationality and instrumental rationality, the administration gradually deviates from the expectation of the public in the value and the choice of technical rationality, then falls into the plight and governmental legitimacy crisis of lacking in governmental public responsibility, public policy mistakes, administrative inefficiency, prominent administrative monopoly as well as the emergence of social issues. Objectively, all the issues require the shift of paradigm of traditional public administration, innovation of governance tools and the breakthrough in theory.Making analysis of Minzu’s cultural heritage management from the two-dimensional perspective of local governance and Minzu policy can not only present the structure and model of current Minzu’s cultural heritage management clearly, but also explore the right path of optimal management of Minzu’s cultural heritage. The issue of Minzu’s cultural heritage management should not be underestimated, and the optimal management of Minzu’s cultural heritage is the focus of this research. Through the systematical analysis and comparison study of management of World Cultural Heritage Lijiang Ancient Town, the paper attempts to make a deep analysis of current issues of Minzu’s cultural heritage management, and then put forward to measures and suggestions of its optimal management by the means of Positivist theory, and under the guidance of Marxist Minzu theory and policy as well as the knowledge of multi-discipline such as Heritage Management Science, Political Science, Local Governmental Science and Public Economics.