The State Administration of Cultural Heritage signed a joint agreement to protect the Silk Road heritage on March 4 with Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, as well as the Ningxia Hui and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions.

Since 2006 China and neighboring countries in Central Asia have been preparing for the World Heritage nomination of the Silk Road.

The nomination file of the Silk Road's initial section and the Tianshan corridor road net, which includes five categories of 33 representative heritages, was jointly submitted to the UNESCO on Feb 1 by China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, applying for the inscription in the World Heritage List in 2014.