Noting that the world's cultural and natural heritages are increasingly threatened with destruction, not only from decay, but also by social and economic development, and protection of them at the national level is incomplete, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) felt it essential to establish an effective system of collective protection of the heritages.

The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted at the 17th Session of the General Conference of the UNESCO held in Paris on November 16, 1972. To date, 177 countries signed the convention. Altogether 754 heritage sites from 129 member countries have been included in the World Heritage List.

China signed the convention on November 22, 1985, and became a member of the World Heritage Committee on October 29, 1999. Till now, 29 cultural and natural sites in China have been included in the World Heritage List, making China rank third of the 177 signatory countries, just after Spain and Italy, which have 37 and 36 respectively.

As a signatory country of the convention, China is much younger than Spain and Italy. But the rapid increase in the amount of China's heritage sites indicates that China is taking an active part in protecting its heritage and has really done a comparatively good job in protection.

Heritage protection needs large amount of capital input. In recent years, government input in the protection has increased rapidly. Annual investment in the protection by the Central Government alone is nearly 10 million yuan ($1.21 million).

China's efforts in protecting world heritage sites have won the acknowledgement of the World Heritage Committee. Its annual session will be held in China for the first time. Zhang Xinsheng, Vice Minister of Education has been appointed as the chairman of the 28th Session of the World Heritage Committee.

According to the spirit of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, world heritage sites within a country should be protected strictly by law. In China, legal provisions on protecting the world heritages are included in the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics promulgated in 2002, as well as  local  protection  regulations. However, China still lacks a special and comprehensive law on the protection of the world heritage sites.

During the process of legislation, contradiction between protection and development is an unavoidable problem, which is also a problem prevalent in other countries when protecting world heritages.

Having no uniform administration is another problem. The present situation in China is that the heritage sites are administrated in segments. Cultural properties are administrated by the State Administration of Cultural Heritages, while the Ministry of Construction has jurisdiction over natural heritages, as well as matters related to historic and cultural cities. This situation hampers the effective administration of the world heritages.

Damage to the ecological environment caused by tourism also poses threat to the heritage sites.