The Research on the Role of the Government for Protecting Chinese Local Intangible Cultural Heritage

This article examines the role of the government for protecting local intangible cultural heritage. Intangible cultural heritage refers to the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills-as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith-that communities, groups and in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. To protect local intangible cultural heritage is currently facing some difficulties, such as no inheritors, uneasy collecting, inappropriate concept of protection, small investment led to shrinking of intangible cultural heritage and so on. In recent years, although the government has made some efforts, the protection level is still low in general. The government should be primarily responsible and should be policy makers, advocators, implementers and arbiters of local intangible cultural heritage. It is argued that the government can do a lot to protecting local intangible cultural heritage, so that in the decades hence, there will be a better, clearer and more empirically-based idea of how to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage of the world s peoples.