China is making efforts to better protect historical sites with the drafting of a statute, publicized by the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council on Thursday to seek opinions from the public.

According to the new proposition, people who are responsible for damaging the outlook, environment, or features of historical and cultural cities, towns, and villages will be severely punished.

Relevant institutions can be fined up to one million yuan (US$131,500), and individuals might be fined for a maximum of 200,000 yuan, the draft says.

Movie production teams must get approval from the authorities before they move into historical sites, and they would be required to make protection plans to submit in advance.

The 51-clause draft statute says urban and rural development plans should be drawn up in line with the principles of cultural heritage protection.

The draft also asks local governments to make greater efforts to protect cultural heritage by "maintaining their real nature and integrity," and "finding a point of balance between protection and development". Governments at city and county-level would be asked to survey buildings of historical value in their regions and put up signs.

In 1982, the State Council approved the first batch of "historical cities", selected because they were capitals in ancient times, or places where major historical events took place; China had 107 "historical cities" by the end of March this year.

Accelerating urbanization is destroying China's cultural and architectural heritage as some local governments dismantled valuable historical sites and erected fake replacements, or built large, new, and exotic buildings.

The draft also demands that local governments set aside special funds to finance the protection of historical sites. Statistics show that China earmarked a combined 189 million yuan for cultural heritage protection from 2001 to 2005; the funds allocated for 2006 alone reached 149 million yuan.

(Xinhua News Agency July 27, 2007)