In the future, on the base of respecting the value and function of cultural heritage, we would motivate the whole society to protect cultural heritage, which could also meet people’s demand for better lives.

    Cultural heritage was human’s treasure left by history. People were it’s creator, owner, user and inheritor. It’s protection was for people of current era and the future.

    Worldwide, cultural heritage protection had once been dominated by “material-oriented” ideas, but later transformed to “people-centered” ones thanks to the progress of theory relating to cultural heritage. In 1975, Europe Architecture Heritage Conference passed “Amsterdam Declaration” which included people of relating interest in the decision process of cultural relics. This marked that the international society started to pay attention to cultural heritage’s value and significance to people. Later, the circle of international cultural heritage payed more attention to the relationship between people and heritage and transformed to the “people-centered” principle. In 2019, World Heritage Committee decided that “cultural heritage protection based on human rights” should be written into the “Operational Guidelines of Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage”. The above proved that in the relationship between human and cultural heritage, human were more and more important and more attention was payed to human.

    People in China also needed to change their mindset and valued people more in the protection of cultural heritage in the new process of development.

    National Cultural Heritage Administration established “The Guidance on the Opening of Architecture belonging to Cultural Relics” and the “The Guidance on the Exploitation of Great Sites”, both of which highlighted sharing in a new era, including inclusive participation and people-centered cultural heritage protection. It’s written in the “Zhengding Declaration of Ancient City Protection” that “we must stick to the people-centered principle when protect ancient cities”. Lijiang river and Pingyao preserved the appearance of the ancient cities while increasing income by developing tourism and thusly improve people’s livelihood. Three Lanes and Seven Alleys in Fuzhou (a cultural heritage) had been exploring “people-centered and live protection” ideology, becoming one of the first batch of demonstration areas of community museums. Other projects, including national cultural parks, heritage corridor, three year plan of “internet+Chinese civilization”, the protection and live usage of revolutionary cultural relics, stressed the social features of cultural heritage and the non-profitable features of the exploitation, so cultural relics and ancient sites could serve the public. More and more museums were paying attention to visitors’ psychological and emotional experience, paying more attention to visitors’ knowledge increase, passing values to others and improving self-cultivation.

    Took Beijing as an example, the local government followed the people-centered ideas. It took cultural heritage’s value and significance into consideration in the protection of famous historical and cultural cities and the declaration of the axis of Beijing, presenting that cultural heritage was an important resource in the development of city culture and economy. The government saw the protection and live usage of cultural heritage as vital methods to improve people’s living quality, bringing benefit to common people. One of the significant effect was to let people understand why cultural heritage project was so important, then supported it and participated in it.

    China became a part of “Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage” in 1985. Since then, 56 cultural sites had became world cultural heritages, accumulating successful experience in heritage protection and management. In the future, we would continue to respect the value and function of cultural heritage, on the base of which we would motivate the whole society to be a part of cultural heritage protection to have better effect and to meet people’s expectation for better lives.