UNESCO officials Monday spoke highly of China's efforts in protecting the world's natural and cultural heritage.

China has a great amount of precious heritage and a powerful government system to protect these heritages, Kristal Buckley, an official of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the organization that evaluates cultural relics for the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee (WHC), told a news conference here.

What's more, the official said, China has also made important efforts to support its neighboring countries in heritage protection.

Buckley said the ICOMOS now had a team working actively in China in cooperation with the government.

He added that the Chinese government has started to train a number of youngsters to work specially for heritage protection.

The WHC's rotating president Juao Luiz Silva Ferreira and UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture Francisco Bandarin also hailed China for its work in protecting the heritages.

The WHC decided on Saturday at its 34th meeting in Brasilia to add the historic monuments of Dengfeng in central China's Henan province to the World Cultural Heritage List.

And on Sunday, the "Danxia Landform of China", which consists of six geologically and geographically related Danxia Landform areas that collectively feature the outstanding universal values of Danxia geomorphology in southeast China, was also proclaimed the world's heritage.

With the two newly-included monuments, China, which became a member of the World Heritage Convention in 1985, now has 40 properties inscribed on the list.

The current World Heritage meeting will last until Aug. 3.

(Xinhua News Agency August 3, 2010)