China's historical and cultural heritage is facing a new era of destruction, thanks to the country's rapid urbanization, according to a top construction official.

Qiu Baoxing, vice-minister of construction, said historical sites and cultural relics have been "devastated" by the "senseless" actions of local officials bent on pushing new construction in cities.

"They are totally unaware of the value of cultural heritage," Qiu said.

Qiu said Chinese cultural heritage has suffered through two prior eras of destruction since the founding of New China in 1949: huge numbers of historical sites were destroyed during both the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and cultural revolution in the 1960s and '70s.

Another official, Tong Mingkang, deputy director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said local governments have failed to preserve cultural heritage sites, and some have even torn them down and built fake relics in their place.

"It is like tearing up an invaluable painting and replacing it with a cheap print," he said.

Qiu said the "blind pursuit of large, new and exotic buildings," by local officials means that there is increasingly little diversity in architectural styles.

"It is like having a thousand cities having the same appearance," he said.

One measure in the works to combat the problem is a revision of the Town and Country planning act, which will prevent local officials from arbitrarily changing city planning, Qiu said.

Tong noted that a five-year, 1 billion Yuan survey has been launched nationwide to gauge the status of cultural relics.


Questions:

1. Why does Qiu say that China's historical and cultural heritage is facing a "third round of havoc" since the founding of the PRC in 1949?

2. What is a "cultural relic"？

Answers:

1. Because local governments are being careless in their renovations and redevelopment, often destroying sites of historic significance in their push to construct modern buildings. Qiu said relics were also destroyed during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

2. A cultural relic may be thought of as a physical place or object endowed with cultural and/or historic significance.

About the broadcaster:

Matt Doran is an award-winning American newspaper journalist and an undergraduate student at Albion College. He is currently a polisher for China Daily Website and is on summer break from Beijing Foreign Studies University, where he will resume his study of Chinese in the fall.