UNESCO launched the Memory of the World Programe in 1992, which aims to raise awareness to the world endangered, scattered or being destroyed documentary heritage, prevent collective forgetting, and call for the protection and promotion of precious documents preserved in archives and libraries around the world.

As a country with great documentary heritages, China has been actively supporting and participating in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programe. In 1996, China established the Chinese National Committee for MOW and created the world’s first national-level documentary heritage register in 2000. China is also the founder and active supporter of the Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific, and has made contributions to promote the development of the Memory of the World Programe in the Asia Pacific region and the protection and dissemination of documentary heritage.

The National Archives Administration of China is the leading institution of the Memory of the World work in China. Since the first Chinese documentary heritage inscribed by the Memory of the World Register in 1997, it has successively organized 13 document heritages such as the Documents of Nanjing Massacre, Compendium of Materia Medica, Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, Qiaopi and Yinxin Correspondence and Remittance Documents from Overseas Chinese, Records of the Qing’s Grand Secretariat – ‘Infiltration of Western Culture in China’, The Archives of Suzhou Silk from Modern and Contemporary Times to be listed by the Memory of the World Register.

Author: Yang Taiyang, Wang Chunyan

Source: National Archives Administration of China Website

Originally published on China Archives News, Issue No.3164 front page, January 4, 2018