A Study on the Practice of Wushu as Intangible Cultural Heritage in China

35 categories of Wushu are included in the list of intangible cultural heritages through the 4 times of announcements by Chinese government in 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2014. Among these, 11 categories were chosen for extended development. For regionally, the primarily selected items focused on northern martial arts from Hebei and Henan provinces while the secondary selection included southern martial arts from Guangdong and Fujian provinces, spreading to the entire China. However, southern regions have 7 sectors from Fujian, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Shanghai while sectors from the northern regions are total 39, showing remarkable contrast. In addition, Hebei has 12 items, with the most items, and then Shandong has 7 items and Henan has 5 items and Hubei and Shanxi have four items respectively. This feature is dominated in regions with centralized with the origins of Chinese martial arts. There are comparatively many items selected for metropolises such as Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai, showing the intangible cultural heritage policy of Wushu seems to be used actively in big cities with huge population and boosting economy. For other feature, north east regions such as Jilim, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning are barely selected and north west and south west regions are selected with only two, Sichuan and Shanxi, showing very huge regional deviation. These differences indicate the phenomena of active submission and assessment on traditional Wushu as intangible cultural heritage focusing on the origins of the Chinese martial arts and economically developed regions. On contrary to the condition to submit items with policy of "focusing on protection and priority on emergent protection or with danger of extinction due to social changes or lack of protection, it also includes items with very popular recognition and commercial competing power such as Shaolin Kungfu or Taijiquan. The screening criteria should be applied to the essence of the policy and it is necessary to be concerned in and focus on finding and conservation of traditional martial arts requiring emergent relief and protection. In order to overcome these limitations, it is necessary to continue top-down finding and protection by the discovery and research team organized by the central government.