The State Council, China's cabinet, Monday submitted a law on safeguarding China's intangible cultural heritage (ICH) for its first reading at the nation's top legislature, the National People's Congress.

The draft law proposes the creation of representative lists of national and local intangible cultural heritage to safeguard heritage that is of historic, literary, artistic or scientific value.

The State Council and provincial governments must create ICH lists separately while county governments should make regular surveys of ICH, the draft law said.

Foreign organizations can only make such surveys in China after obtaining Chinese government approval and in cooperation with Chinese academic research institutions, according to the law.

The draft law comprises of six parts, including: the definition of ICH; mechanisms for ICH surveys; regulation of the inheritance of ICH; and penalties for destruction of ICH.

ICH is defined as the traditional cultural expressions and practices of China's various ethnic groups that have been passed down through generations and that have become part of the group's cultural heritage.

Material objects and sites of these expressions and practices are also recognized by the draft law as ICH.

"It's urgent that China enact a law to strengthen the protection and preservation of ICH since some of them are being destroyed by modern lifestyles," said Minister of Culture Cai Wu while explaining the draft law to the NPC Standing Committee.

Some traditional culture is disappearing quickly, and the absence of an ICH protection law is causing difficulty in preventing that disappearance, Cai said.

Cai noted that quite a number of policies and measures have been taken to protect ICH, adding that the law being proposed provides legal status to these policies and measures.

Statistics from the Ministry of Culture show the State Council and the ministry had by 2009 designated 2,516 national ICH items and 1,488 heirs to ICH items.

The draft of the Law on Intangible Cultural Heritage was submitted to the bimonthly session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress which opened Monday.