Wang Wenzhang, honorary president of the Chinese National Academy of Arts and Chairperson of the CRIHAP governing board, chairs the meeting.


Xie Jinying, Director-General of the Bureau for External Cultural Relations, China's Ministry of Culture, gives a speech as a representative of the Chinese government.

The CRIHAP governing board is the centre’s management organization, consisting of representatives from the Chinese government, the UNESCO Director General, the China National Commission for UNESCO, governments of related countries and internationally well-known cultural experts and scholars from the Chinese National Academy of Arts. The annual session is held to examine the last year’s work report, the work plan for the present year, financial statements and budgets.

CRIHAP is an international institution in the field of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) established under the agreement between the government of China and UNESCO to enhance UNESCO’s Capacity Building Strategy of ICH safeguarding at national and regional levels in the Asia-Pacific Region. Since its establishment in 2012, CRIHAP has finished 19 international training sessions and trained 650 people. In 2016, CRIHAP held seven training sessions in Cambodia, the DPRK, Tonga, Nepal, Pakistan and China. CRIHAP also actively expanded cooperation networks with Kyrgyzstan, New Zealand and Mongolia, where the centre helped to lay a foundation for the pursuit of further development of capacity building in these countries. Meanwhile, CRIHAP established a work team with the UNESCO Office in Phnom Penh and the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Cambodia and evaluated the capacity building training in Cambodia from 2014 to 2016. And CRIHAP still continues to translate and edit training materials, carry out research work for training, publish News Report of International ICH Safeguarding and provide a communication platform for ICH safeguarding.

In the future, CRIHAP will make use of local and regional special knowledge to provide technical aid to training in the Asia-Pacific Region. And CRIHAP will compile and publish training materials and develop training instruments, including materials about policy making, data collection and partnership development. To ensure smooth and efficient training, CRIHAP will carry out training work in separate regions, including Northeast Asia, Middle Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Southern Pacific Ocean Region through a results-oriented management approach. Moreover, CRIHAP will fully develop a series of support services to assist training.