It’s no secret that efforts to preserve and restore the Great Wall have faced all kinds of challenges. Well, in an effort to help solve the problem, the China Foundation for Cultural Heritage Conservation is now turning to crowdfunding to help preserve the historic relic. The 2016 Great Wall Public Offering officially launched its Tencent donation platform on September 1, People's Daily reports.
“China’s Great Wall is a renowned world heritage site; however, the protection of the Great Wall currently faces a grim challenge,” Dong Yaohui, Executive Vice President of the Great Wall Society of China, said during a press conference. “Take the Ming [section of the] Great Wall as an example: the total length of the Ming Great Wall is 6,259.6 kilometers. Currently, only 8 percent of that length is well-preserved. Twenty percent is under general protection and 31 percent has already disappeared.”
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Donations will be used to repair the Xifengkou section of the Great Wall in Hebei and the Jiankou section in Beijing. The foundation aims to fix roughly 1,050 meters of the Xifengkou section using funds from both crowdsourcing and other donations. The estimated cost to fix this section of the wall is RMB23 million. The initial crowdfunding goal is set at RMB11 million. The cost to repair the Jiankou section is RMB15 million, of which RMB10 million has already been donated by the Tencent Charity Foundation.
Since 2005, roughly RMB1.9 billion has been invested in repairing the Great Wall using state revenue, as part of the Great Wall Protection Program (2005-2014). However, given the massive scale of the historic structure more money is needed, Liu Shuguang, Vice Director of the State Cultural Relics Bureau, said.
If you’re interested in donating you can visit the Tencent Charity website by clicking here.
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