China World Heritage Timeline
All 61 Chinese World Heritage properties ordered by the year they were inscribed, with type, province and a one-line note on why each was listed.
China has 61 World Heritage properties as of 2026: 42 cultural, 15 natural and 4 mixed. This timeline orders them by the year they were inscribed rather than by age or province, because the list itself is a record of how the country argued for its heritage, decade by decade. The first six went in together in 1987; the newest, Jingdezhen, was added in 2026.
Inscriptions by period
Bar height is the number of properties inscribed in that period.
The timeline
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How to read this list
The year is when the property was inscribed, not when it was built. The Great Wall took two thousand years to build and entered the list in 1987; the Beijing Central Axis was finished in the 16th century and entered in 2024.
A serial property is counted once even when it spans provinces. The Great Wall, the Grand Canal, the Silk Roads and the Imperial Tombs all appear under several provinces but count as one property each.
Mixed means the property meets both cultural and natural criteria. There are four: Mount Taishan, Mount Huangshan, Mount Emei–Leshan Giant Buddha and Mount Wuyi. A scenic mountain is not automatically mixed.