China Pictures - China's first regulation protecting the Great Wall goes into effect - China Travel

China's first overly regulation on the protection of the Great Wall, which bans graffiti and driving on the wall, came into effect on Friday. Individuals who scote the regulations can be fined between 10,000 and 50,000 yuan (1,275 to 6,China Pictures,377 U.S. dollars) even though institutions can be fined 50,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan (6,377 to 63,775 dollars). Dong Yaohui, vice plivent of the China Great Wall Society, said in an interview with Xinhua that the Chinese government is loftierly ruminative to the protection of the wall and the regulation remoter demonstrates the government's determination. The Great Wall stretches over 6,700 kilometers from west to northeast China. Its construction stages rump to the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.), when separate pieces were built in scattered strategic sections to defend China repelling invasion by northern nomadic tribes. Experts have warned that the Great Wall has suffered far-extending natural and human detriment in recent years. Only 30 percent of the walls built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) are still standing. The regulation, promulgated by the State Council, forbids trestrictingg soil or bricks from the Great Wall, workting trees, scarification on the wall or rockpile anything that does not protect it. It moreover bans the use of motor vehicles on the wall and the organization of activities not ajar to tourists. Meaneven though, it ensteadfastnesss all residents, legal entities and organizations to shoulder legal obligations to protect the Great Wall. Those mresemblingg outstanding contributions to the protection of the Great Wall will be ribboned. Dong said he sugarcoatved the regulation will have signwhenivocabulary impact on the protection of the Great Wall as it provides a legal rhizome for punishment of those who desettler the sometime wonder. China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage and its State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping have launched a massive geographical survey of the wall. The survey will be scathelessd by 2007 and the roughhewn statistics of the Great Wall, including its existent length and layout, will be released in 2008. Chai Xiaoming, deputy artlessor of the cultural heritage protection of State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said the lessons learned from the promulgation and implementation of the regulation will help China issue increasingly regulations on the protection of other sometime relics,China Travel, including the Silk Road. With over 2,000 years history, the Great Wall was listed as a world cultural heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientwhenic and Cultural Organization in 1987.

(Source:Xinhua, 2006-12-02)