The International Treaties On The Protection Of Underwater Cultural Heritage And Their Enlightenments For China

The underwater cultural heritage witnessed the development of human history and embodied the civilization. It provided as valuable research stuff for the historians and archaeologists. It shocked the visitors with its mystery and strange fascination. It lured the treasure hunters with huge interest. The fact that the international law which governs the protection on underwater cultural heritage had long been defective, resulted in maritime order chaos and disputations as well as contradictions, meanwhile caused the treasure hunters wreak more havoc. This situation made against the protection of UCH.The international community tried to reach a consensus on how to protect and preserve the UCH. The most significant outcome was the Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage. the process of adopting the 2001 Convention was complex and difficult, and the provisions of 2001Convention are evade the crucial point such as the ownership of UCH in order to balance the interests of involved parties. But even then 2001 Convention, as the first international law focus on protection of UCH, contains quite a few groundbreaking rules. For instance, preservation in situ of UCH, the principle that UCH shall not be traded , sold ,bought ,or bartered as commercial goods, precluding the application of the law of salvage and the law of finds to UCH, the regimes of protection in various maritime zones, etc. These rules have positive influence over the protection of UCH. All in all, the adoption of 2001 Convention marked an event of great importance to the whole community concerned with the protection of UCH.The law of salvage and the law of finds have been applied to settle disputes over shipwrecks and their cargoes for hundreds of years, so that an unique and complicated regime of law was formed to govern UCH. Although this regime of law was criticized for the guiding premise behind it is to return goods to the stream of commerce, from the numerous cases we could discovery some shining ideas, which promoted the protection of UCH. For instance, the approval of the preservation in situ of UCH, additional consideration of whether the salvor's work met archaeological standards in assessment of the salvage award. In addition, institution of Receiver of Wreck, UK , for example, may throw some new light on the institution design so as to get rid of the traditional method which imposes uniformity in all cases.China has a great many cultural heritage resources, but the regime of law on protection of UCH is deficient. Destroy and treasure hunting threatened UCH located in territorial waters and other waters under control. Therefore regime of law about UCH need improved as soon as possible, with the shortages like: self-finite concept of UCH, lack of guiding principle, lack of reward and punishment, unclear process of preservation and disposition. 2001 Convention and other relevant treaties could be used as reference to develop our regime of law. Considering the professionals on UCH are far from enough, maybe allowing private company to enter into UCH is feasible. There are disputes about sovereignty over territorial waters in South China Sea, but 2001 Convention didn't afford effective measures to settle the matter. It is wisdom to settle the matter by signing bilateral, regional or other multilateral agreements.