Intangible Cultural Heritage Rights Public Law Protection Study

Intangible cultural heritage is a common wisdom of human. It presents not only the nationalcharacter and soul, and also the unique spirit of the various ethnic groups. Intangible CulturalHeritage has great significance in the development of human creativity, the national cultural heritage,protection of the world’s cultural diversity, promotion of the sustainable development of humansociety. The rapid update of science and technology, the integration of the world accelerates, theconvergence effect of national culture is becoming apparently. Ethnic minorities gradually aremarginalized politically economically and culturally. As one of the most important kind of culturalrights, the rights protection of minorities’ Intangible Cultural Heritage has increasingly become apressing problem worldwide. Currently, China’s legal research about the protection of IntangibleCultural Heritage Rights is still in initial stage. People lack awareness of the change that IntangibleCultural Heritage have brought to human’s lifestyle. However, more and more people have realizedthe importance of the protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage Rights.This paper is divided into six parts: The first part—Introduction introduces two different debateof scholars, whether the Intangible Cultural Heritage Rights is characterized as public law, or asprivate law. And then elaborates the positions and perspectives of this article. The first chapter, thisarticle discusses the basic concept of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Rights by defining the conceptof minority, of minority cultural rights in the legal vision, of heritage rights, of Intangible CulturalHeritage Rights, and of the subject, object and content of non-ethnic cultural heritage. In the secondchapter, the author discusses the legitimacy of Intangible Cultural Heritage protection by public lawfirstly, mainly through three angles: cultural diversity, political recognition and the equality of law.Secondly, discuss the necessity of public law protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage Rights byfour aspects: weak status of ethnic minorities, the superiority of the public law protection, thesecurity of national culture, the trends of international protection of human rights. Chapter IIIexpounds the situation and the insufficiency by three aspects: the status of public law legislation, theprotection of the administrative system, the judicial practice. In chapter IV, the author puts out somehumble opinions on how to solve the problems of Intangible Cultural Heritage Rights protection.Part VI is the Conclusion, the author attempt to offer some suggestions and ideas for the systemconstruction of Intangible Cultural Heritage Rights protection by public law. So as to promote theprotection of China’s Intangible Cultural Rights and the long-term development of IntangibleCultural Heritage and the harmonious coexistence between peoples.