China's Great Wall under siege from tourists

China's tourism and construction sectors pose a growing threat to the Great Wall, disfiguring swathes of its ancient facade and wrecking its landscapes, experts said yesterday.

Graffiti rubbish are only some of the eyesores visible along parts of the mammoth structure, which stretches intermittently across thousands of kilometers and can be seen from space.

Peddlers put up unauthorized ticket booths and ladders and collect money from Chinese and foreign tourists venturing to its wilder sections.

Hotels homes are springing up along what state media have dubbed the symbol of China's national spirit, begun more than 2,000 years ago to keep out warlike nomads, as property developers milk the evolving tastes of city weary locals.

"Many pressures have conspired to damage what we call wild wall," founder of International Friends of the Great Wall William Lindesay told a news conference.

He blamed the rise in income, increasing car ownership, more leisure time and property developers for blighting views of the Wall north of Beijing.

"Unless there's big progress in the next few years, the loss of cultural landscapes of the Great Wall in the Beijing region will become Beijing's third great lament," said the man who trekked nearly 2,500km of the wall in 1987.

Beijing most of its ancient city wall to make way for a subway some two decades ago. Now it is swiftly demolishing most of its ancient alleys, or "Hutongs", in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic games, he said.

The US-based World Monuments Fund added the Great Wall to its list of the world's 100 most endangered sites. Built by The Wall, built by hundreds of thousands of workers and political prisoners, was added to a list of the World's Most 100 Endangered Sites compiled by the US-based World Monuments Fund earlier this year.

The wall, built by hundreds of thousands of workers and prisoners, snakes it way for more than 6,400km across jagged mountains from the east coast though the Gobi desert in the west.

Officials striving to strike a balance between preventing parts of the wall collapsing and preserving its authenticity, said Zhang Jian Xin of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

In a move that should deter more damage, Beijing is expected to issue its first regulation to protect 630km of Wall around the city, said Kong Fangzhi, deputy director of the municipal cultural heritage administration.

The regulation, already in draft form, would include the formation of special protection zones along the Wall, Kong said.

But conflicting interests within China's ministries would make it difficult to overcome chronic problems, Lindesay said.

The Construction Ministry, rather than the State Bureau for Cultural Relics managed all world heritage sites in China, underscoring the severity of the problem, he said.

Parts the Wall outside greater Beijing, where villagers have used its stones for many years to construct homes, faced similar problems from economic pressures.

"I think it's perfectly understandable that local people want to use the Great Wall overlooking their homes in an economic way," said Lindesay. "The problem is they are not receiving any guidance and they're not regulated by any laws to protect it"