Xi Ties City Heritage to ‘Cultural Self-Awareness’
China’s leadership is framing the protection of historic urban districts as an act of “cultural self-awareness,” in a Xinhua feature that uses three flagship renewal projects to argue that safeguarding old buildings and alleys preserves both a city’s history and its economic future.
Published on 19 September, the feature — part of Xinhua’s “What General Secretary Xi Jinping cares about” series — presents urban renewal (城市更新) as simultaneously a “livelihood project, a development project and a cultural project,” and quotes Xi stressing the need to protect a city’s “distinctive historical context, human geography and natural landscape.”
Context: An Old Idea Given New Policy Weight
The piece leans on the concept of “cultural self-awareness” (文化自觉), a term popularized by the late sociologist Fei Xiaotong, to elevate heritage preservation from a technical concern into a matter of national identity. It arrives with an infrastructure of policy behind it: in May 2025, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued “Opinions on Continuing to Advance Urban Renewal Actions,” a national document that requires strengthening historical and cultural heritage protections throughout urban renewal, under the principle “protection first, protect all that should be protected, promote protection through use” (Dazhong/Wang Xinwen).
Against a backdrop of decades of breakneck urbanization — in which ancient neighborhoods were frequently bulldozed — the messaging signals that conservation has become an explicit political priority, at least on paper.
Fuzhou: ‘A Model for Guarding a City’s Cultural Lineage’
The feature opens in Fuzhou’s Sanfang Qixiang (三坊七巷), a district whose lanes trace back to the Jin dynasty and peaked in the Ming and Qing. According to the account, a then-Fuzhou Party Secretary Xi Jinping intervened at a pivotal meeting in the 1980s to shield the neighborhood from development pressure.
Restoration has followed what the article describes as a “repair as old” approach — “inlay-style, gradual, micro-circulation, small-scale, uninterrupted.” More than 300 ancient houses across roughly 270,000 square meters have been restored, and the district was named among the first batch of typical city-renewal cases by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. From 2021 to 2025 it drew more than 100 million cumulative visitors, with footfall exceeding 26 million in 2025 alone.
“Sanfang Qixiang is a model for guarding a city’s cultural lineage,” said Zhang Yuxuan, a Gen-Z docent there, recalling Xi’s 2021 visit in which he said old buildings and neighborhoods must be treated with “a heart of cherishing and reverence.” Chen Yongjian, a 76-year-old resident and volunteer docent, put it more simply: “Protecting Sanfang Qixiang preserved our nostalgia.”
Shantou: Letting Old Buildings Live On
In Shantou, attention turns to the Xiaogongyuan port-opening district, a cluster of arcade (骑楼) buildings that once witnessed the city’s treaty-port commerce before falling into disrepair. A pilot restoration began in 2016; after Xi’s 2020 visit, in which he called for integrating “modern life” into the old city, the project accelerated.
Some 353 buildings totaling about 230,000 square meters have been restored. The former site of the Xinghua Daily has become Huilan Academy, one of the first ten “Lingnan Academies” and now a combined reading space, exhibition hall and cultural venue. Demand has followed: since 2023 annual visitors have exceeded 10 million, and new cafés, themed restaurants, craft shops and homestays have moved in. Entrepreneur Cai Haiyan, 38, converted a century-old arcade building into a Chaoshan-culture-themed restaurant blending Teochew opera, gongfu tea and cuisine.
Jingdezhen: From Kiln Site to World Heritage
The feature’s capstone is Jingdezhen, the “millennium porcelain capital,” where Xi inspected the Taoyangli historic district in October 2023 and called ceramics “an important name card of Chinese civilization.” His engagement dates back further: as early as 2015 he issued two instructions on protecting the Imperial Kiln site.
The article details the painstaking restoration of the Xujia Kiln, one of the city’s oldest surviving wood-fired kilns, which took three years and nearly 150,000 kiln bricks fired by ancient methods — with the names of the craftsmen who repaired and guarded the old kiln engraved onto the bricks. Officials relocated the municipal Party and government office buildings to “make way” for a protection zone centered on the Imperial Kiln site. In all, 196 old kiln sites, 108 old lanes and 247 heritage-protection units are now under systematic protection, and more than 60,000 handcraft porcelain workshops remain active.
On 25 July 2026, at the 48th UNESCO World Heritage session in Busan, South Korea, “Jingdezhen Handcrafted Porcelain Industrial Remains” was inscribed on the World Heritage List — China’s 61st site, filling a gap in the list’s “porcelain” theme (Guangming Online).
Analysis: Heritage as Soft Power and Stimulus
The feature’s evident purpose is political as much as cultural. By anchoring each project to a personal intervention by Xi, it reinforces the leadership narrative characteristic of the “Xi cares about” series. But it also reflects a genuine policy shift: heritage districts are increasingly treated as economic assets, touted for their capacity to open “new growth points for expanding domestic demand and boosting consumption” at a time of sluggish consumer confidence.
The choice of cases is instructive. Each pairs preservation with “activation” — adaptive reuse that attracts visitors, businesses and residents rather than sealing sites off as museums. Jingdezhen’s quarter-share of urban employment in ceramics-related work, and the thousands of foreign “Jingpiao” artists it has drawn, illustrate the model’s pull. As French ceramicist Camille, who settled there, said of the kiln restoration, “This is not only restoring an ancient kiln, but restoring the connection between people and history.”
It is worth noting that the visitor counts, restoration figures and project details originate almost entirely from official sources and have not been independently verified. The article’s emotional framing — nostalgia, “name cards,” “Chinese qualities” — is also characteristic of state-media storytelling.
What’s Next
The feature points to a widening set of parallel efforts in Qufu, Pingyao and Suzhou, suggesting the “protection plus activation” model will be promoted nationally as urban renewal accelerates. The open question is whether other cities can replicate the combination of high-level political cover, sustained financing and local demand that made the three flagship cases viable — and whether preservation will hold as growth pressures return. For now, Beijing appears intent on treating old cities not as obstacles to modernization, but as its most marketable symbols.