Heritage Conservation and China's Belt and Road Initiative by Chan, Victor; Hui, Yew-Foong; Hui, Desmond;

Short description:

This book explores how China’s Belt and Road Initiative through promoting a non-Western-centred geopolitical narrative is affecting the conservation and management of Belt and Road heritage sites.

Long description:

This book explores how China’s Belt and Road Initiative through promoting a non-Western-centred geopolitical narrative is affecting the conservation and management of Belt and Road heritage sites. Considering the dynamics between academics, heritage professionals, and government officials, the inscription process and management of Silk Roads heritage sites, and the practice of China’s Belt and Road heritage diplomacy, the book examines how changing heritage conservation practices are influenced by politics and professionalism and negotiated in different ways across different nation states in the Belt and Road zones. Highlighting the different aims and outlooks of Chinese diplomacy, UNESCO and other international heritage conservation organisations, nation states as guardians of national interests, and local communities as custodians of everyday lived heritage, it shows how the Belt and Road Initiative has energised multilateral efforts in heritage diplomacy and management. It also discusses how the ‘professional’ status of heritage professionals, including practitioners engaged by governments and international organisations and also scholars and researchers who provide consultancy advice, is often not politics-free, with heritage professionals often co-opted into speaking for stakeholders, especially national governments.

Table of Contents:

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Contributors

1.

Introduction

Heritage conservation and China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Between politics and professionalism

Victor C.M. CHAN, Yew-Foong HUI, Desmond HUI and Kazem VAFADARI

Part I: The “new discourses” of silk roads

2.

Silk road expertise and the geopolitics of connectivity

Tim WINTER

3.

The construction of the silk roads as World Heritage in China

Jieyi XIE

4.

The silk roads: A mirror of contestation and a metaphor of ‘revival’ in regional shared heritage

Sandra USKOKOVIC

Part II: Negotiating the inscription and management of heritage sites

5.

Archaeological heritage management along the silk roads: Ancient and modern context

Tim WILLIAMS

6.

Reviving the ancient maritime silk road: The politics of heritage instrumentalization in Asia’s port cities of Quanzhou and Melaka

Yunci CAI

7.

Negotiating architectural restoration approaches: Differences between Chinese and Singaporean conservation specialists

Kang Shua YEO

8.

The importance of Iran’s Yazd province for the Silk Road: Past, Present and Future

Kazem VAFADARI and Nastaran EHSANI

Part III: China’s Heritage diplomacy along Belt and Road initiative

9.

Chinese archaeology in Egypt: Between eurocentrism, de-westernisation and decolonalisation

Christian LANGER

10.

Silk Roads heritage diplomacy: UNESCO & China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Victor C.M. CHAN

11.

The maritime silk road: tourism, heritage, symbols and the people-to-people dimension of China’s ‘heritage diplomacy’ in Indonesia

Angela TRITTO and Punto WIJAYANTO

12.

Heritage diplomacy along the maritime silk roads: the case of Muslim sites in Southern China

Pascale BUGNON

Index