UN-China Joint Program Helps Preserve Ethnical Cultural Resources in SW China

A UN Program promoting ethinc minorities in China's southwest, in cooperation with the Chinese Government, is soon going to be heading into its final year.

The joint program is designed to promote the Chinese government's efforts to preserve ethnic minority culture.

CRI's Zhao Yang has more.

The program, dubbed the China Culture and Development Partnership Framework, is funded by the UN-Spain Millennium Development Goals Achievement Fund.

Abhimanyu Singh is the Director of the UNESCO Beijing Office, which is the organization that's responsible for the program.

"What we are trying to do here is to improve the participation of ethnic minorities in cultural, social ,economic and political life, through improved public policies and surveys. At the same time we seek to empower the minority communities to identify and protect their heritage and cultural resources, and benefit from their cultural based development."

The director says the 3-year program, which started in early 2009, has been working to benefit some 5000 members of ethnic minorities in the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, and Qinghai, along with the Tibet Autonomous Region.

China has the world's biggest ethnic minority population, and also boasts a variety of cultural wealth.

Qi Qingfu, a professor on ethnology with Minzu University of China says these cultural treasures are vulnerable with social progress.

"The ethnic minorities in the remote areas are mostly in their way towards the modern society. And during this process, their cultural resources are facing the danger of extinguishment, especially when their life style and production mode are changing; many of their cultural traditions are changed accordingly."

As such, the UN program is undertaking a number of important steps, including cultural mapping, culturally-sensitive basic education, as well as museum enhancement, to preserve endangered ethnicities.

Abhimanyu Singh, Director of the UNESCO Beijing Office, explains how they go through the process of documenting and trying to preserve the unique cultures.

"In a village of Dong minority, 27 houses are recently lost in fire because their houses are made of wood. And the villagers decided to use their own words, photographs and film their traditional fire prevention practices in order to pass them to the younger generation because they had lost this over the years."

Qi Qingfu, the ethnology professor, says the participation of world-level organizations gives us a better chance to understand and coordinate ways to protect culture.

"They can share with us their experiences in cultural protection in other countries. Most importantly, their participation can better promote the social awareness and effort on cultural resources protection."

Agreeing with this point, Abhimanyu Singh says the partnership is key when developing policy.

"We are always sharing experiences with local government people, with the provincial set-up as well as the national set-up to be able to see which experience is better targeted, and have a more of chance of being replicated upscale and sustained."

Singh also points out they've been working very closely with the Chinese government in trying to weave the plan into China's overall economic development strategy to try to ensure the program lives on after the UN's work on the ground is finished next year.

For CRI, I'm Zhao Yang.