Heritage report submitted by China to remain confidential

China’s National Administration of Cultural Heritage has submitted to UNESCO a conservation report on the heritage situation in Macau, but its contents will not be shared with the public before the summer. The report, which was submitted by the Chinese agency on the behalf of the Macau SAR, promises to protect both “the historic landscape and urban setting of Macau as a ‘city of hills and sea’.”

First reported by local Portuguese newspaper JTM, the conservation report was submitted to the United Nations agency on December 1, but only an abridged version is currently available to the public.

According to JTM, UNESCO explained that the full version of the report was not published on its website at the request of the Chinese government. Moreover, Macau’s Cultural Affairs Bureau told the newspaper it would not be “appropriate to release the report until the conclusion of the evaluation” at the 43rd session of the World Heritage Committee, to be held in Azerbaijan this summer.

At just one page in length, the abridged version of the report mentions in broad terms the heritage goals of “safeguard[ing] of important structures and their spatial composition within the World Heritage zones” and the preservation of “landscape characteristics that are found within the buffer zones, outside the buffer zones and extended to the entire Macau Peninsula.”

Macau has been criticized in recent years for what some observers have characterized as a slackening of heritage protection standards. Several recent projects were thought to be in possible violation of the city’s commitment to preserving the state of the historic center of Macau, as inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

In 2017 the United Nations body weighed in on the matter, expressing concern about one project at the Fisherman’s Wharf and another near the Guia Hill, where the developers had been granted permission to exceed local building height restrictions.

“Technical analysis and heritage impact assessments have been conducted prior to the commencement of any construction project that might potentially exert an adverse impact on the outstanding universal value of the Historic Centre of Macau,” the report noted in an apparent answer to these concerns.

“For the project at Macau Fisherman’s Wharf and the unfinished building project on the periphery of Guia Hill, tremendous efforts have been invested in the negotiation process with the respective owners of the said properties, in order to determine a solution that works best for the reduction of potential negative impacts on the area surrounding the World Heritage property.”