Abstract
As an intergovernmental specialized agency with 194 Member States under the United Nations system, UNESCO is the sole UN body mandated with cultural affairs. During the 1990s, UNESCO launched the large-scale research programme Integral Study of the Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue within the framework of the World Decade for Cultural Development, aiming to raise global awareness of shared civilizational roots among Silk Roads nations and the concept of humanity’s common heritage. Entering the 21st century, UNESCO initiated an ambitious cross-border project to advance the serial transnational World Heritage nomination of the Silk Roads, covering cultural heritage sites across Eurasian countries. After over a decade of negotiations among states with differing political systems, languages and cultural backgrounds, participating State Parties to the World Heritage Convention jointly formulated unified nomination frameworks and procedures, and formed new interpretations of the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of transboundary cultural routes. On 22 June 2014, the first segment of the Silk Roads was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, namely Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor, a serial transnational cultural heritage stretching around 5,000 kilometres with 33 component sites distributed in China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The second corridor, Silk Roads: Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor, jointly submitted by Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, was inscribed on 17 September 2023. In July 2026, the World Heritage Committee will convene in Busan, Republic of Korea to review the joint nomination of Silk Roads: Fergana-Syrdarya Heritage Corridor proposed by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Keywords
UNESCO; Silk Roads; World Heritage; Intercultural Dialogue
CLC Number: G122 Document Code: A
1. Introduction and Background
The Silk Roads form an interconnected network of routes linking ancient East Asian societies to the Mediterranean in the west and the Indian subcontinent to the south, which greatly facilitated the development and prosperity of numerous great civilizations across the globe.
These heritage routes constitute one of the world’s most extensive long-distance communication networks, stretching roughly 7,500 kilometres, with certain branches extending over 35,000 kilometres. While segments of these routes had been utilised for millennia, the scale of cross-continental exchanges boomed starting from the 2nd century BCE, alongside the flourishing long-distance trade of high-value goods. Such interactions exerted far-reaching political, social and cultural influences on all societies along the routes. For nearly two millennia, the Silk Roads facilitated integration, exchange and dialogue between East and West, contributing enormously to the shared prosperity of humankind; the whole of the route carries far greater value than the sum of its individual components.
The network flourished primarily from the 2nd century BCE to the end of the 16th century CE, originating from Chang’an (modern Xi’an) and reaching the Mediterranean coast in the west and the Indian subcontinent in the south. It generated a two-way intercontinental trading system with a vast array of commodities. Chinese silk ranked among the most precious goods traded east to west, alongside precious metals, gemstones, ceramics, perfumes, decorative timber and spices, exchanged for cotton and woollen textiles, glass, wine, amber, carpets and fine horses. This cross-civilizational trade endured for centuries, sustained by a complete system of caravanserais, commercial settlements, trade cities and military fortresses, rendering it arguably the longest cultural route in human history.
Yet commodities were far from the only goods transmitted along the Silk Roads. Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Nestorian Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism all spread via these arteries of exchange. Scientific and technological innovations were also disseminated bidirectionally.
Technologies originating in China including papermaking, printing, gunpowder, cast iron manufacturing, crossbow production and the magnetic compass travelled westward alongside porcelain craft. Meanwhile, bridge construction, cotton cultivation and textile weaving, tapestry techniques, astronomical calendars, viticulture and glass/metal processing technologies spread east from Central Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Western Europe. Mutual exchanges of medical knowledge, medicinal herbs, fruits and staple crops also took place on a large scale. Collectively, the Silk Roads gave rise to globally significant achievements across economic, social, cultural and environmental spheres.
Figure 1. The author during the Desert Route Expedition from Xi’an to Kashgar, July–August 1990. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
Figure 2. Group photo of the Desert Route Expedition team departing Xi’an on 20 July 1990. Source: Professor Lin Meicun, Peking University School of Archaeology and Museology
Figure 3. The author (left) with Doudou Diène, Coordinator of UNESCO’s Integral Study of the Silk Roads Project, Quanzhou, February 1991. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
UNESCO has played a pivotal role in unlocking the cooperative potential of the Silk Roads. Within the 1988–1997 World Decade for Cultural Development, the Organization launched the landmark Integral Study of the Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue programme, designed to foster recognition of shared civilizational heritage across Silk Roads nations (UNESCO, 1997). In the summer of 1990, I took part in a 45-day field expedition traversing from Xi’an to Kashgar across desert terrain, an experience that ignited my lifelong commitment to Silk Roads heritage conservation.
Concurrently, responding to the 1994 Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List, numerous State Parties revised their national Tentative Lists to identify underrepresented heritage typologies, with cultural routes emerging as a key priority. In the Asia-Pacific region, the Silk Roads stood out as an exemplary candidate, serving as the historical meeting ground of Eastern and Western civilizations that had sustained cross-cultural prosperity for over two millennia. In February 1996, China formally inscribed the Chinese segment of the Silk Roads on its national Tentative List for World Heritage nomination.
The World Heritage List remains UNESCO’s flagship cultural initiative. Adopted in 1972, the World Heritage Convention has grown to encompass 196 State Parties, up from just 20 in 1978. As of July 2025, a total of 1,248 World Heritage properties have been inscribed globally across 170 countries, including 972 cultural sites, 235 natural sites and 41 mixed cultural-natural sites.
Serial transnational nominations are a core mechanism of the World Heritage List, offering a framework to analyse the historical and contemporary outcomes of intercultural exchange. A property qualifies for serial transnational nomination only when its boundaries span two or more sovereign states. As such, the Silk Roads not only embody ancient cross-civilizational interaction, but also provide a collaborative platform for modern nations and local communities to sustain cultural dialogue. These heritage routes consist of tangible cultural assets shaped by millennia of cross-border communication, reflecting interconnected historical developments across vast geographic spaces. The concept of a serial transnational Silk Roads nomination originated from the 2003 Asia-Pacific Periodic Reporting Action Plan, jointly proposed by China and Central Asian nations as a potential thematic World Heritage category (UNESCO, 2003).
Since 2003, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre has coordinated all preparatory work for the serial transnational Silk Roads nomination. The project guides State Parties to compile complete nomination dossiers to address the underrepresentation of cultural routes on the World Heritage List, while advancing implementation of the 1994 Global Strategy adopted at the 18th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Phuket. The Strategy establishes frameworks to mitigate regional representation gaps on the List, and the Silk Roads nomination initiative was designed as a groundbreaking solution to address underrepresented Central Asian heritage. Working closely with relevant Asian State Parties and ICOMOS as the official Advisory Body, the World Heritage Centre developed methodological and strategic guidelines for the cross-border serial nomination of Silk Roads cultural heritage.
2. Conceptualization of the Silk Roads World Heritage Nomination
The serial transnational Silk Roads nomination stands as a pioneering contemporary intercultural initiative that empowers participating nations and local communities to advance renewed cross-civilizational dialogue. To address the complex challenges of cross-border cooperation, UNESCO laid early groundwork for Silk Roads collaborative research in the mid-1990s (Elisseeff, 2000).
In May 2000, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre hosted the Global Strategy Expert Meeting on Central Asian Cultural Heritage in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Two years later, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention and the UN Year for Cultural Heritage, the 2002 International Symposium on the Silk Roads in Xi’an adopted the Xi’an Declaration, reiterating UNESCO’s call for international cooperation to safeguard irreplaceable Silk Roads heritage assets (ICOMOS, 2005).
Since 2003, the World Heritage Centre has led coordination for the terrestrial Silk Roads transnational nomination, a direct output of the first cycle of Asia-Pacific Periodic Reporting. Supported by the UNESCO-Netherlands Funds-in-Trust, the Centre organized two formal missions to China in summer 2003 and 2004 to develop nomination methodologies for the 4,450-kilometre Chinese Silk Roads segment stretching from Xi’an to Kashgar. While China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) identified the Silk Roads as a top-priority project among over 80 Tentative List sites, standardized nomination frameworks remained absent. Rather than drafting nomination text directly, the missions delivered a systematic feasibility study (Jing & van Oers, 2004) presented to SACH in June 2004 to guide full-scale nomination preparation.
The study adopted a holistic interpretive framework focused on capturing the complete narrative of the Silk Roads as a space of cross-cultural integration. The Silk Roads cannot be reduced to isolated monuments; their cumulative cultural significance far exceeds individual sites. The methodology required comprehensive analysis of all complementary heritage typologies distributed across the route network. A formal typological classification was developed to categorize all Silk Roads heritage assets into three core groups:
1. Infrastructure facilitating trade and transport: caravanserais, inns, military garrisons, fortifications, bridges, irrigation works, natural and cultural landmarks;
2. Production sites for traded commodities: mines, metalworking workshops, handicraft and industrial manufacturing facilities;
3. Heritage outcomes generated by cross-cultural exchange: trade cities, urban settlements, religious shrines, cave temples, tombs, pilgrimage sites, and intangible heritage including language, music, dance and poetry.
The field missions proposed an incremental serial nomination framework structured around clustered heritage groups representing distinct dimensions of Silk Roads history. Cultural routes were defined along three analytical axes: spatial scope (sites, constructions and zones of influence), temporal usage (origins, frequency and historical variation), and cultural impact (spiritual, material and demographic exchange). The missions recommended establishing a dedicated intergovernmental Task Force to coordinate cross-border research and nomination drafting. As the chief architect and global coordinator of the Silk Roads nomination project, I launched the first intergovernmental bilateral meetings between China and Central Asian nations in Turpan in August 2006. Following a 2008 workshop in Xi’an, additional Asian nations joined the initiative, and the Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee (ICC) for the Serial Transnational Silk Roads Nomination was formally established in Almaty in May 2009.
3. Regional Consultation Meetings
With financial backing from the UNESCO-Netherlands Funds-in-Trust, World Heritage Fund, Norway and Italy, the World Heritage Centre convened a series of cross-border regional consultations derived from the 2003 Asia-Pacific Periodic Reporting Action Plan. In November 2005, Central Asian nations formally proposed the Silk Roads as a candidate serial transnational heritage category at an Almaty workshop. Key consultation forums were held sequentially across Eurasia: Turpan (August 2006), Samarkand (October 2006), Dushanbe (April 2007), Xi’an (June 2008), Almaty (May 2009), Xi’an (November 2009), Ashgabat (May 2011), Bishkek (September 2012), Almaty (November 2015), Ashgabat (December 2018) and Hamadan (September 2019). A unified strategic framework and multi-stage action plan were agreed in Samarkand (2006). In April 2007, the Concept Paper for the Serial Nomination of the Silk Roads in Central Asia and China drafted by lead expert Dr Henry Cleere was endorsed in Dushanbe and submitted to the 32nd Session of the World Heritage Committee in Québec City later that year.
Figure 4. Delegates at the 2006 Turpan UNESCO Silk Roads Stakeholders Consultation Workshop. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
Figure 5. Participants of the First Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee Meeting, Xi’an, November 2009. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
The 2008 Xi’an Workshop brought together heritage authorities from China and all five Central Asian republics to finalize national Tentative List additions for Silk Roads sites, with observer delegates from Afghanistan, Iran, Japan and Mongolia invited to explore cross-border collaborative frameworks. In May 2009, the draft Statement of Outstanding Universal Value (SOUV) for the Silk Roads was unanimously adopted in Almaty, and the ICC was formally established with representatives from 17 Asian countries, tasked with coordinating all nomination drafting and transboundary site management systems. The ICOMOS International Conservation Centre Xi’an (IICC-X) was designated as the permanent Secretariat of the ICC.
4. Silk Roads Statement of Outstanding Universal Value (SOUV)
The draft SOUV document was formally discussed and adopted on 22 May 2009 during the 5th UNESCO Sub-Regional Silk Roads Workshop in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and establishes the core value framework for all Silk Roads heritage corridors:
The Silk Roads constitute routes of integration, exchange and dialogue that have sustained shared human prosperity for nearly two millennia. The whole network carries greater value than its individual constituent parts. Flourishing primarily from the 2nd century BCE to the late 16th century CE, the route system originated at Chang’an and extended east to west across Eurasia to the Mediterranean, and south into the Indian subcontinent, generating a bidirectional intercontinental trade network of diverse commodities. Chinese silk represented the most valuable traded good, alongside precious metals, gemstones, ceramics, perfumes and timber exchanged for cotton, wool, glass, wine, amber, carpets and fine horses. This cross-civilizational commerce endured centuries, supported by caravanserais, trading towns and military outposts along a 10,000-kilometre network, making it the longest cultural route in human history.
Trade goods were only one dimension of cross-border transmission. Religious traditions including Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Nestorian and Orthodox Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism all disseminated along the routes. Chinese innovations in papermaking, printing, gunpowder, metallurgy, crossbow design and the magnetic compass spread westward, while bridge engineering, cotton cultivation, tapestry art, astronomical calendars, viticulture and metalworking technologies travelled east from Central Asia, the Middle East and Mediterranean regions. Bidirectional exchange of medical knowledge, crops and fruit varieties also occurred at scale. Collectively, the Silk Roads generated globally significant cultural, economic, social and environmental heritage manifestations.
Three core heritage typologies define Silk Roads assets:
1. Infrastructure supporting trade and transit;
2. Production sites for traded goods;
3. Cultural outcomes derived from cross-border exchange.
Key value attributes of the serial heritage property include geographical landscapes, urban planning, architectural forms, socio-economic evolution, historical political events, religious and spiritual traditions, scientific and technological breakthroughs, visual art achievements and intangible cultural heritage. The nomination satisfies six World Heritage evaluation criteria (WHC.23/01, Paragraph 77, 2023):
(ii) Exhibits outstanding interchange of human cultural values across civilizations;
(iii) Represents an exceptional testimony to long-distance cross-continental trade and cultural transmission;
(iv) Preserves outstanding urban, architectural and technological ensembles that sustained two millennia of interregional exchange;
(v) Bears exceptional witness to human adaptive interaction with diverse natural environments;
(vi) Has direct tangible links to globally significant historical traditions, belief systems and cultural values.
The document further formalizes standards of Integrity and Authenticity, alongside cross-border management frameworks. Integrity requires full representation of all heritage attributes required to demonstrate the Silk Roads’ OUV, with complete boundary coverage for each component site. Authenticity mandates verified historical connections between each heritage asset and the active Silk Roads trading era (2nd century BCE – 16th CE), with all conservation interventions aligned with international heritage standards. Governance operates on multi-tier levels: the ICC as global coordinating body, national coordination agencies within each State Party, and localized site management plans for individual heritage components, with unified cross-border interpretation and visitor management protocols.
5. Thematic Research & Full-Scale Nomination Delivery
Following adoption of the unified SOUV, regional consultations revised the 2007 Concept Paper and updated national Tentative Lists, establishing standardized nomination timelines, capacity-building programmes and an international expert working group. Japan and South Korea provided trust fund support for heritage inventory work across Central Asia, Nepal and Bhutan, prioritizing Silk Roads candidate site documentation. A landmark ICOMOS thematic study The Silk Roads: An ICOMOS Thematic Study (Williams, 2014) was commissioned by the ICC, identifying 54 potential transnational heritage corridors and establishing the “corridor-based serial nomination” model for comparative site evaluation. The research mapped the spatial distribution and unique historical characteristics of Silk Roads monuments, tracing shifting power structures and trading systems across Eurasian history, and provided core technical guidance aligned with the 2010 Ittingen Expert Meeting on serial nominations (UNESCO, 2010).
At the 2011 Second ICC Session in Ashgabat, the Ashgabat Agreement was formally adopted, confirming phased corridor nomination and prioritizing China-Central Asian routes for the first inscription cycle. Two dedicated international projects were launched to streamline dossier preparation: the UNESCO-Japan Trust Fund Silk Roads Documentation Programme, and the Belgian BELSPO Central Asian Cultural Heritage Information System (CHRIS). Two complete serial nomination dossiers were submitted to the World Heritage Centre in February 2013, reviewed at the 38th World Heritage Committee Session in Doha (2014). The Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan) received full inscription, while the Penjikent-Samarkand-Poykent corridor nomination from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan was deferred for supplementary revisions.
Figure 6. Boundary map of Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor. Source: © UNESCO/WHC
Figure 7. UNESCO World Heritage Inscription Certificate for Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor, issued June 2014.
Figure 8. Chinese, Kazakh, Kyrgyz delegates and ICOM experts celebrate inscription at the 38th World Heritage Session, Doha, 22 June 2014. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
The inscribed Chang’an-Tianshan corridor stretches over 5,000 kilometres with 33 component sites: 22 in China, 8 in Kazakhstan, 3 in Kyrgyzstan, spanning ancient capitals, mountain passes, oasis settlements and desert fortifications across Central Eurasia. Its successful inscription established a replicable transnational serial nomination template, subsequently adopted for multiple new corridors: Zarafshan-Karakum, Fergana-Syrdarya, South Asian Silk Roads, Volga-Caspian Corridor and maritime Silk Roads initiatives.
In September 2023, Silk Roads: Zarafshan-Karakum Corridor (Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) was inscribed at the 45th World Heritage Session in Riyadh. The 866-kilometre corridor includes 34 heritage components spanning highlands, steppes, oases and arid deserts, representing diverse human adaptation to regional Silk Roads trading systems, the second official Silk Roads transnational World Heritage property globally. The UNESCO Japan Trust Fund Phase III initiative (launched Feb 2022) supports preparatory work for the Volga-Caspian Corridor nomination led by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, to be reviewed at the 7th ICC meeting. The Fergana-Syrdarya four-country joint nomination will undergo formal evaluation at the 2026 Busan World Heritage Committee Session.
Figure 9. The author chaired the 6th ICC Meeting in Hamadan, Iran, September 2019. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
6. Conservation & Cross-Border Management Framework
The 2009 SOUV established a multi-layered governance structure for all Silk Roads heritage corridors, centred on the intergovernmental ICC as the supreme coordinating body, supplemented by national heritage coordination agencies and localized site management plans tailored to regional ownership and administrative systems. The successful inscription of two flagship corridors demonstrated that unified value frameworks and structured cross-border cooperation enable effective transnational heritage nomination despite divergent political, legal, linguistic and professional contexts, fostering regional dialogue and sustainable community development across Asia.
Financial and technical support has been provided by Belgium, China, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, alongside academic institutions including IICC-X, UCL, Tsinghua University and IICAS. The ICC membership has expanded to 17 participating nations plus Bhutan as observer state. At the 5th ICC Session (Ashgabat, 2018), Professor Lü Zhou (Tsinghua University) and Bakyt Amanbaeva (Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences) were elected joint co-chairs of the coordinating committee.
Figure 10. Group photo with ICC Co-Chairs Lü Zhou and Bakyt Amanbaeva, 2018. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
The 2018 Ashgabat ICC Session shifted the committee’s core mandate from nomination preparation to long-term cross-border conservation coordination, prioritizing capacity-building for Central Asian heritage sites under threat. The session mandated increased funding and expert collaboration through IICC-X to strengthen monitoring, planning and cross-site coordination. Supplementary joint initiatives include the 2013–2015 Silk Roads Sustainable Tourism Programme (UNWTO & WFTGA), training guides and developing balanced visitor strategies aligned with SDG 11.4. The 2018 UNESCO-EU joint project advances thematic research on Silk Roads architecture, crafts and bazaar heritage across Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran. The UNESCO Silk Roads Online Programme (UNESCO-SROP) delivers global outreach through youth photography contests, research grants, interactive atlases and shared academic repositories to foster cross-cultural digital dialogue.
Figure 11. 5th Intergovernmental Coordinating Committee Meeting, Ashgabat, December 2018. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
7. Conclusion
The serial transnational Silk Roads World Heritage nomination represents an ambitious, landmark intercultural cooperation initiative facilitated by UNESCO and the World Heritage Convention. Over decades of coordinated preparation, the project has reshaped global understanding of cultural routes as a World Heritage typology, demonstrating a replicable cross-border collaborative model for heritage protection. Spanning vast geographic scope, millennia of history and diverse heritage categories, the Silk Roads corridors encapsulate the full spectrum of tangible and intangible human cultural expression, while the multi-state nomination process has catalysed sustained regional dialogue and sustainable development planning.
A shared OUV framework, standardized upstream nomination procedures and consistent international guidance enabled productive collaboration across nations with divergent governance systems, languages and cultural traditions. This innovative serial nomination mechanism enhances mutual understanding between Eurasian nations, laying a solid cultural foundation for cross-border exchange frameworks including the Belt and Road Initiative. Guided by the Chinese philosophy of “harmony in diversity”, the project embodies UNESCO’s founding mission to build peace in the minds of all peoples through cross-civilizational cultural exchange.
Figure 12. UNESCO Constitution stone inscribed in nine languages at Paris Headquarters. Source: © Jing Feng, UNESCO
The story of Silk Roads World Heritage inscription remains an ongoing collaborative project between Eurasian nations. The two inscribed transnational corridors set a foundational precedent for future nominations of Fergana-Syrdarya, South Asian, Volga-Caspian and maritime Silk Roads heritage assets. The multi-decade cooperative process offers a globally replicable model for cross-border cultural heritage governance, affirming that shared cultural assets can unite diverse civilizations through dialogue, mutual respect and joint sustainable protection for future generations.
About the Author
Jing Feng, Chief of Culture Unit, UNESCO Bangkok Regional Office; Former Global Coordinator of the UNESCO Silk Roads Transnational World Heritage Nomination Project at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Paris). Joined UNESCO Headquarters in 1997, specializing in World Heritage conservation and international cultural exchange programmes across Eurasia.
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Manuscript received: 21 September 2024 | Accepted: 10 December 2025 | Published online: 11 March 2026
