On December 16^th, the Fifth Ministerial Meeting of the Ancient Civilizations Forum was held as a video conference. In the conference, attendees introduced the result of the 2021 Forum Expert Conference and exchanged ideas of illegal transportation of cultural heritage. The conference is hosted by Óscar Maúrtua, Peru’s minister of foreign affaire. Attendees were representatives from other countries, including Armenia, Bolivia, China, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Italy and Mexico.

    Li QUN, vice culture and tourism minister and director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, stressed in his speech that China has been exploring the origin of the Chinese civilization; spend more effort on cultural heritage protection; enhance the innovative transformation and development of cultural heritage; trace looted relics and improve the international cooperation, so as to push forward the ancient civilization to continue to develop. Li Qun said that relating departments should make full use of the advantages of the ancient civilization and the platform of the Ancient Civilizations Forum. The aim is to absorb beneficial part from other countries’ ancient civilizations and be a leading figure for exchanges between dialogues, so as to enable cultural heritage to be a bridge for people from different countries and civilizations to coexist with each other. He brought up three initiatives. The first is to protect cultural heritage to cope with global challenges. The second is to support people-to-people connection to enhance global civilization partnership. The third is to stick to innovation and opening-up to improve the influence of the Ancient Civilizations Forum.

    All representatives agree that cultural heritage is an important carrier for the inheritance of culture and history of every nationality. It’s significant for the economic and social development in the world and the peaceful co-existence of every nationality. All sides agree we need to continue to enable the Ancient Civilizations Forum to play it’s role to enhance the international exchanges; to improve the multilateral cooperation mechanism; to protect the diversity of cultural heritage and world culture; to support the inheritance and progress of civilization and to inspire the vitality of the wisdom of the ancient civilization, so as to offer solution to solve the problem in the current era. It’s decided by the conference that the Republic of Iraq will be the host of the 2022 Ancient Civilizations Forum.