Few cities carry the weight of history as visibly as Beijing. With more than 3,000 years of continuous urban life and nearly nine centuries as China's national capital, the city has long been a crucible of politics, art and ideas. Today, home to over 21 million residents, it remains one of the world's most consequential cultural capitals.

The 5th edition of the World Culture Cities Forum (WCCF) Report paints a vivid portrait of a city that safeguards ancient heritage while building new institutions, expanding public access to culture, and positioning itself as a hub for global creative exchange.

A heritage city without equal

Beijing's cultural inheritance is staggering in scale. The city holds eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites within its boundaries – including the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven and sections of the Great Wall – placing it in a league of its own among the world's great urban centers.

That heritage is not merely preserved behind glass. In 2024, Beijing's Central Axis – the historic north-south spine that has organized the city's layout since the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) – was inscribed as a new UNESCO World Heritage Site. The achievement was the result of years of painstaking work: conservation science combined with regulatory reform, digital innovation and sustained civic participation. The result was not only the preservation of centuries-old urban fabric, but a renewed sense of community identity along the Axis and a strengthening of Beijing's dialogue with the wider world.

Scale and reach: The numbers behind the culture

The statistical picture in the WCCF Report underscores just how vast Beijing's cultural ecosystem has become. In 2024 alone, the city staged over 65,000 performances and welcomed 372 million cultural tourists – figures that are extraordinary even by the standards of global megacities.

The infrastructure supporting this activity is equally impressive: 241 museums, 352 theaters, 332 cinemas with 2,313 screens, and 20 public libraries lending 14 million books a year. Some 178,000 businesses operate in the cultural and creative sectors, employing over 1 million people. The city's total budget runs to approximately 8.37 billion dollars, and its 110 higher education providers include 12 specialist arts institutions.

Underpinning all of this is a governance philosophy the WCCF Report describes as the "15-minute cultural service circle" – an ambition to place cultural facilities within a 15-minute reach of 99% of the city's population.

Intangible heritage: Depth in every district

If the Central Axis represents Beijing's tangible legacy, its intangible cultural heritage is no less formidable. The city operates a three-tier system of representative heritage projects spanning national, municipal and district levels. At the apex, 14 Beijing-originated traditions – among them Peking Opera, Kunqu Opera and Taijiquan – appear on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. This tally alone places Beijing first in China by number.

Nationally, the city stewards 144 representative projects; at the municipal level, a further 303. 

These are not archival categories.

In 2023, Beijing launched its first International Week of Intangible Cultural Heritage, bringing these practices into public life and inviting international attention. The following year saw the opening of the Beijing ICH Experience Centre, a new facility designed to make intangible heritage tangible and accessible to residents and visitors alike.

Shougang Park: Industrial heritage reimagined

On the western outskirts of the capital, you can witness one of the most striking urban regeneration stories in the world. Shougang Park, covering 863 hectares of former steel production land, has been transformed into a landmark cultural and recreational destination – a model, the WCCF Report notes, for how cities can turn industrial heritage into living, breathing urban space.

The catalyst was the 2022 Winter Olympics, which brought international attention and infrastructure investment to the site. Since then, the blast furnaces and cooling towers that once defined Beijing's industrial west have been repurposed into ecological parks, cultural venues and entertainment spaces. The night-time economy has taken root here, and tourism has followed. Shougang is now frequently cited, both in China and internationally, as a benchmark for creative urban revitalization.

What makes Beijing different

The report also highlights Beijing as part of a global majority of cities – 84% of those surveyed – actively supporting creative career pathways, youth entrepreneurship and cultural skills development.

Many cities claim to blend the ancient and the contemporary. Few can do so at Beijing's scale, depth or ambition. The 15-minute cultural circle, the three-tier ICH system, the strategic transformation of Shougang, the meticulous work on the Central Axis are not just one-time projects. They are expressions of a coherent, long-term cultural policy that treats heritage as a living resource and public access as a non-negotiable foundation.

Zaruhi Poghosyan is a multimedia editor for CGTN Digital. This is the second article in our city-by-city series exploring five Chinese cities that are investing in long-term resilience through culture and redefining what it means to be a global city in the 21st century. Data and findings cited in this article are drawn from the 5th edition of the World Culture Cities Forum Report. Next in the series: Chengdu.

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