Fudan University has signed an agreement with nine research institutes, grottoadministration organizations and businesses to set up an alliance to strengthen cooperation and support grotto protection.

The agreement was signed during a university forum in Shanghai on how to protect of China’s grottoes against the background of the Belt and Road initiative.

“Grottoes are important cultural heritage as they contain relatively complete historical information of politics, philosophy, thoughts, religion, arts, architecture, technology and information,” said Sun Yingmin, of the International Council on Monuments and Sites in China. “Therefore, grottoes account for a large amount of key protected cultural units in China.

“But grottoes also face challenges in protection, such as geological hazards, environmental disasters and damage brought by tourism,” he added.

Wang Xudong, director ofDunhuang Academy, said protection should not be merely protection, the value of grottoes in cultural communication should also be valued.

He said the Dunhuang grottoes were the legacy of the ancient Silk Road and should continue to play a role in people-to-people communication among Belt and Road countries, making them aware of how our ancestors had respected and communicated with each other.

Besides traditional methods, Wang believed that digital technologies were helpful to better protect grottoes by permanently storing more complete data of the cultural heritage and opening them to the public more conveniently.

He also said that more international cooperation was necessary to conduct research on Dunhuang culture and to learn more protection methods and technologies.