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.
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
Victor C.M. Chan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Yew-Foong Hui is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, at Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Hong Kong. Desmond Hui is a Professor and Founding Department Head of Art and Design at the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Kazem Vafadari is Professor of Tourism and Hospitality at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan.
