WELL PRESERVED:Visitors appreciate ceramic ware on show at the Capital Museum in Beijing (LUO XIAOGUANG)

Before the third national survey of cultural heritage, China conducted two earlier surveys that began in 1956 and 1981 respectively. There are no statistics from the first one, and the second, although larger in scale, failed to compile a complete list because of limited funding and unsophisticated technologies, said Shan.

The third survey, which began in June 2007, is expected to complete by December 2011. Compared to the previous two, new technology and devices, such as information networking, digital cameras, and GPS navigation, are being used to gather more exhaustive and authentic data, he said.

By October 31, 2009, the Central Government and local governments had pumped 1.04 billion yuan ($152.3 million) into the survey. Researchers have completed nearly 90 percent of the project and found and registered 550,300 new cultural relics, while verifying 226,000 already registered items.

Shan has pledged to investigate these cases and discover the reasons. If people were at fault because of inefficient protection, they would be punished, although a variety of reasons could account for deterioration and decomposition, he said.

Compared with items and antiques housed in museums, unmovable cultural relics such as those in historic sites and mausoleums were more often subject to damage or losses caused by theft, disaster and rapid urbanization.

During the massive 2008 earthquake, Sichuan Province, renowned for historic relics, suffered a huge loss not only in deaths, but also in cultural heritage. In all, 71 cultural relics covered by national protection orders and 152 items under provincial protection were damaged to varying degrees. The damage may require more than 5 billion yuan ($732 million) for restoration and rehabilitation.

Officials of local cultural heritage administrations began the report they filed to the SACH on the losses with "It's disastrous. It's beyond words."

But according to Shan, the restoration and rehabilitation work in the quake-battered area has proceeded smoothly during 2009. The best of China's experts in this area have gathered there to offer expertise and help, and there have been donations from all walks of life as well as an allocation from the Central budget.

The Central Government spent 2.2 billion yuan ($322 million) salvaging and protecting cultural relics in disaster-stricken areas nationwide in 2009, said Shan.

The Dujiangyan cluster of ancient architecture is about to regain its original appearance and will also be reinforced during the restoration of the massif where it is seated, given the instability of local geological features, he said.

The Erwang Temple built to commemorate Li Bing and his son, the two engineers who built the Dujiangyan irrigation system more than 2,000 years ago, is expected to reopen to tourists in May this year.

But cultural heritage security situation in China remains grim. The country uncovers approximately 2,000-odd cases of cultural relic thefts and smuggling every year, Shan said.

The SACH has established a special department to coordinate with many departments of the Ministry of Public Security in cracking down on related crimes. Through their joint operations, they have tracked several major gang thefts from tombs and recovered cultural relics in 2010 in Beijing, Hainan, Hunan, Liaoning and Shaanxi provinces.

China's fast pace of urbanization poses another threat to prominent large-scale cultural and historic sites. The State Council has announced six lists of about 2,350 key cultural relics under the state-level protection, of which 710 are historic sites and mausoleums. One fourth of the total is large-scale historic sites.

Fu Qingyuan, a researcher with the China National Institute of Cultural Property, says China's large historic sites could face possible damage from ballooning population growth in urban areas.

"Archaeology is the study of looking at humankind's past and recreating the transitions of lifestyle and culture," said Liu Qingzhu, former head of the Archaeological Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "The utilization of cultural relics is always second to their protection, while the goal of archaeology and cultural relics protection is tracing the historical memory and 'cultural genes' of humankind, a country or a nation."

Because of this belief, Liu and the SACH insist that it's not yet the right time to unearth many deep buried treasures. "We still have to catch up with the developed world in protection technology sophistication, " Liu said.