More than 80,000 cultural relics in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region will now have their own archives as part of a filing project on the region's cultural remains.

The regional cultural heritage bureau launched the archiving project in 1999 and the project is still underway, said Xu Fei, deputy director of the bureau.

Workers have finished filing 80,000 cultural relics, but the project will take more time to finish, as the region is abundant in cultural relics, Xu said.

Tibet has more than 2,000 relics sites, among which 27 are under state protection, Xu said.

The region on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, often called the "roof of the world," boasts the World Heritage Sites of the Potala Palace, Norbulingka, the winter and summer palaces of the Dalai Lamas and the Jokhang Temple Monastery.

China conducted two surveys over cultural relics sites in Tibet in 1959 and 1984.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2004)