The State Administration of Cultural Heritage encourages cultural and cultural institutions to provide public welfare "treasure hunting" services to the society

Beijing, December 29 (Reporter Song Xue) In recent years, with the rapid development of China's social economy, cultural relics collection has become a hot spot for cultural consumption. Nowadays, the scale of China's cultural relics market has ranked in the forefront of the world, and has played an important role in meeting the people's collection and appreciation needs and promoting cultural development and prosperity, but there are also problems such as irregular appraisal services, unbalanced market supply, unsmooth circulation channels, and market environment to be optimized, which restrict the healthy development of cultural relics collection and cultural relics market.

In this regard, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, and the State Administration of Market Supervision, jointly issued the Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Folk Collection of Cultural Relics and Promoting the Orderly Development of the Cultural Relics Market (hereinafter referred to as the Opinions), focusing on the key difficulties of social cultural relics and reform and development issues, and exploring the protection and utilization of cultural relics in folk collections and the orderly development of the cultural relics market.

Infographic (Source: CFP)

The "Opinions" involve four aspects of reform tasks

According to a spokesman for the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the "Opinions" has a total of 15 main measures, mainly involving the reform tasks of improving services, optimizing supply, expanding channels, and policy guarantees.

In response to the strong demand for identification and protection and other service issues, the "Opinions" proposed to support qualified state-owned cultural and museum institutions to provide technical services such as storage and restoration for collectors of civil cultural relics, and encourage social forces to establish operational institutions for the preservation and restoration of cultural relics.

In view of the imbalance in market supply, the "Opinions" make it clear that through the establishment of a private collection of cultural relics registration and trading system, simplify the review procedures for auction targets, study and adjust the tax policy for the return of cultural relics, optimize the management of cultural relics entry and exit, etc., to increase the effective supply of the market at multiple levels.

Encourage cultural and cultural institutions with the capacity to provide public welfare consulting services to the society

For a long time, the problem of irregular appraisal services has been one of the most strongly reflected problems in the field of collection. A spokesman for the State Administration of Cultural Heritage said that the enthusiasm for folk cultural relics collection continues to rise, and the collection group gradually moves from a niche to the public, but the vast majority of collection enthusiasts do not have the necessary collection knowledge and cultural relics identification expertise, and the call for the state to set up professional cultural relics appraisal institutions and provide professional appraisal services is very strong. In this regard, in 2020, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage launched a pilot project for the comprehensive reform of social cultural relics in Shanghai, explored the establishment of a public welfare consulting service mechanism for cultural relics appraisal, and guided Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shaanxi and other provinces to organize cultural and cultural institutions to carry out public welfare appraisals. In the past two years, more than 700 appraisal activities have been carried out nationwide, and more than 90,000 collections have been identified free of charge for more than 30,000 collectors.

On the basis of summarizing the work experience of public welfare appraisal, the "Opinions" clearly proposes to establish a normal mechanism for public welfare consultation on cultural relics appraisal, and encourage qualified state-owned museums, state-owned cultural relics stores, and cultural relics appraisal and evaluation institutions involved in the case to provide public welfare consulting services to the society. At the same time, it will further explore the establishment of a national cultural relics appraisal and assessment management system, implement qualification management for cultural relics appraisal institutions and personnel, standardize cultural relics appraisal business activities, and provide standardized and high-quality appraisal services to the majority of collection enthusiasts.

Explore the establishment of a registration and trading system to clarify the conditions for the circulation of cultural relics into the market

The reporter learned that in 2018, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage carried out a pilot project for the registration and trading of cultural relics in private collections in Jiangsu. According to a spokesman for the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, there are two key points in the registration and trading system, one is to clarify the conditions for the circulation of cultural relics into the market, and to clearly prohibit the scope of trading of cultural relics, so that cultural relics business entities and collection enthusiasts clearly know which cultural relics can be traded and which cannot be traded. The second is to establish a credit supervision and management system with the classification of enterprises and the classification of subject matters as the core, establish a credit benchmark for cultural relics transactions, and guide enterprises to operate legally and in good faith.

The spokesman said that the pilot registration and trading in Jiangsu has explored a practical and feasible path for improving the system and mechanism of legal circulation and trading of cultural relics. In particular, the rationality and practicality of key standards such as the "Guiding Catalogue of Prohibited Trade in Cultural Relics" and the "Market Warning Catalogue of Stolen Cultural Relics Cases" have been verified through the pilot, which provides experience for the promotion and implementation of the registration and trading system.

In the next step, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage will refine specific measures to maximize the effectiveness of policies, and strengthen departmental linkage, and jointly create a good development environment through policy coordination and regulatory linkage.