Foreign guests attend the opening ceremony of the fourth Liangzhu Forum in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, on Oct 18. [Photo/IC]

For better protection of cultural heritage, international cooperation should be deepened, the exchange of conservation technologies should be strengthened, and closer dialogue on the return of cultural relics should be promoted, said scholars and officials at the fourth Liangzhu Forum, which opened on Sunday in Hangzhou, the capital of East China's Zhejiang province.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the discovery of the Liangzhu site, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Hangzhou. The site offers important evidence of an early regional state that flourished from 5,300 to 4,300 years ago.

With the theme of "Bridging the Past and the Future: Safeguarding Cultural Heritage for Our Times", the three-day forum has brought together officials, archaeologists and scholars from around the world.

At the opening ceremony, Jiang Xinzhi, vice-chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the nation's top political advisory body, said cultural heritage is the shared treasure of all humanity.

"Facing challenges such as climate change and urbanization, no country can tackle them alone. Only by working together can we protect our shared cultural heritage," he said.

Lina Mendoni, Greece's minister of culture, said cultural heritage connects us with the past, adding that the responsibility to protect and pass it on rests with present generations.

Safeguarding cultural heritage is an area that urgently calls for international cooperation, she said. Nations can cooperate and share technology, for instance by using artificial intelligence to help detect and prevent the illicit trafficking of cultural relics and by working through international organizations to develop rules for tracing the provenance of cultural relics, Mendoni added.

At the opening ceremony, the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China and the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, an intergovernmental organization created to promote the conservation of all forms of cultural heritage, signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation. Another strategic cooperation memorandum was signed between the Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia and the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage.

Rao Quan, director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, said the Liangzhu Forum is a platform for implementing the Global Civilization Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping, and that dialogue among civilizations should be deepened and mutual learning among civilizations strengthened.

Under President Xi's guidance, China has steadily increased its efforts in cultural heritage protection, Rao said. The cultural heritage protection and inheritance plan for the nation's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period calls for strengthening the technology-enabled protection of cultural relics, including the building of a national cultural heritage science and technology innovation center and a national big data center for cultural heritage, he added.

Wang Hao, secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said that Zhejiang has made extensive efforts in cultural heritage protection in recent years, and expressed the hope that the forum can serve as a platform to deepen exchanges and cooperation with the rest of the world in more areas.