2nd LD-Writethru: National survey finds 108 mln moveable cultural artifacts

China's first national survey of moveable cultural artifacts has found that there are 108.15 million items or sets of such artifacts owned by the state.

The State Administration of Cultural Heritage issued a statement Friday saying that 26.61 million of them had been registered correctly.

China conducted the country's first census on moveable cultural artifacts from October 2012 to December 2016, to better gauge and protect the country's ancient artifacts.

The census, which covered over 1 million state institutions on the mainland, investigated, identified and registered various ancient artifacts, establishing a national database.

Paper and digital records of such artifacts will be maintained, with relevant information made available to the public.

A total of 7.08 million cultural artifacts were newly discovered during the survey.

Also on Friday, Vice Premier Liu Yandong addressed a televised conference on the conclusion of the census and called for greater efforts to improve the management of moveable cultural artifacts.

"Efforts should be made to better design and build heritage parks and museums, as well as to improve the relic registration system," Liu said.

According to the administration, 107,000 staff members were involved in the national survey.

To date, about 50 million pictures of the artifacts have been uploaded to the national database and every artifact registered given a unique code indicating the relic's location, organization and sequence number.

"Such code numbers are expected to help track and recover the country's lost cultural artifacts," said Duan Yong, an official with the administration.

However, the survey also noted the lack of proper facilities and staff to protect the country's cultural treasures.

According to the survey, each Chinese preservation worker is responsible for 2,290 items on average.

About 37.12 percent of the artifacts are "partly damaged" and 1.81 percent "seriously damaged."

Only 1.09 percent have received proper restoration.

The statement praised the public's role in preserving the country's cultural artifacts.

In the first nine months last year, the administration's supervision department received 128 reports of violations, including 104 reports from the public, social groups or media organizations. Endi