Insights | China's wisdom and experience beneficial to digital heritage preservation: ICOMOS International Scientific Committee representative

By Xue Lingqiao

"Over the past few decades, the focus of cultural heritage protection has shifted from being material-centric to people- and value-centric. This is because the local communities where cultural heritage is located are the true owners and great guardians of these heritage assets," said Gai Jorayev, scholar of Macao University of Tourism, president of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on AreoSpace Heritage, during an interview with China News Network at the recently held 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang Province.

Jorayev said that with the evolution of cultural heritage protection concepts, heritage experts worldwide should pay more attention to the concerns of local communities. This is because much of the work in protecting cultural heritage is carried out by local community organizations or representatives, rather than solely by cultural heritage experts. 

At this year's Wuzhen Summit, the sub-forum on "Digital Protection and Transmission of Cultural Heritage" attracted wide attention. Regarding how China's digital advancements in cultural heritage protection can benefit Belt and Road Initiative countries, Jorayev shared his insights.

Using remote sensing technology as an example while highlighting the efficiency of digital technology in cultural heritage protection, Jorayev explained that methods utilizing products like drones to collect three-dimensional data can help to protect and manage cultural heritage. Thanks to the more accurate data and faster update frequencies provided by drones, heritage professionals can make decisions more quickly.

He observed that when protecting large archaeological sites along the anicent Silk Road in Central Asia, heritage workers require extensive monitoring to understand the causes of site deterioration and find solutions. Therefore, staff digitized and monitored a vast amount of past archaeological archives, then supplemented them with modern data layers using systematic methods.

"Through this approach, the university researchers such as myself and the local heritage professionals in the region created multiple high-quality dataset layers, which provided effective information for the protection, preservation, and overall management decisions of these heritage assets," Jorayev said.

At the same time, Jorayev also discussed the potential negative impacts of digital technology in cultural heritage protection. In his view, there are two main risks in applying digital technology in this field: first, the over-collection of data, failure to properly handle all collected data, and inability to make these data accessible to a wider group of experts; second, the abandonment of traditional philosophical and theoretical discussions in the development of archaeology and cultural heritage management. 

He explained that due to the emergence of digital technology, cultural heritage workers now have more three-dimensional or digital data. How to ensure respect for local cultures and the correct implementation of archaeological actions is a metric that every cultural heritage worker should consider. 

"We are now in China's Zhejiang, where the network facilities are very good, and the infrastructure is well-developed. However, there are many places in the world that lack such connectivity and infrastructure. Therefore, we need to promote the establishment of fairer and more comparable working standards globally." 

Based on this, he believes that close cooperation should be carried out with Chinese cultural heritage protectors, leveraging their professional expertise to share specialized experience with the global community. "This is beneficial for the cultural heritage," said him.

"The colleagues at China's Northwest University have conducted successful collaborations with colleagues from Central Asian institutions, which is very beneficial for local capacity building, education, and experience sharing." 

Speaking on the Central Asian region where he works, Jorayev emphasized that Central Asian countries are benefiting from the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China. This includes infrastructure development and educational exchanges. As a result, an increasing number of young experts from Central Asia are entering different Chinese universities to study. 

"One of the best examples is the serial Silk Road projects jointly applied for by China and Central Asia. We have now nominated over twenty serial heritage sites. Through these long-term cooperative projects with clear ultimate goals and good collaboration throughout the process, experts from different countries can unite, work together on specific tasks, and share knowledge. This well reflects the overall concept of the Belt and Road Initiative,"Jorayev said.