Abstract
Using the concept of cultural governance, this article analyzes China's cultural-relic institutions and discusses the use of cultural artifacts related to past-ness. It compares the aims and the relationships of the governance of cultural relics during two periods. The first period took place from the early twentieth century to the 1960s, when state ownership and Party-dominant ideology gradually institutionalized the governance of cultural relics during the formation of the socialist administrative state. The second period is the Reforms and Opening Era, when the forces of commodification influences the governance of relics, and ＂reforms of local cultural-relic institutions＂ (hereafter ＂reforms＂) bloom in changing central/local dynamics. This article further analyzes Shaanxi's case of ＂reforms＂ to illuminate the changing features and emerging conflicts in the transformation of how cultural relics are locally governed. Two aspects of local cultural governance in the ＂reforms＂ are the analytical foci here: aim and institutional relationship. This paper notes that ＂reforms＂ reveal the changing aim of local cultural governance towards the pursuance of the cultural economy. It also discusses the rearrangement of the institutional relationship between cultural relics and actors that serve this changing aim of cultural governance.