On July 25, 2026, at the 48th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Busan, Republic of Korea, the "Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites" were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, becoming China's 61st World Heritage site. The sites represent the handicraft porcelain industry system that developed in Jingdezhen from the 10th to the 19th century. With a porcelain-making history spanning more than 1,700 years, Jingdezhen saw its ceramics transported along the maritime and overland Silk Roads for centuries, serving as an important medium for cultural and commercial exchange between East and West. Three months after inscription, in October 2026, Jingdezhen hosted two interlocking international cultural events—the China Jingdezhen International Ceramic Expo and the Jingdezhen Forum—extending the post-inscription agenda from protection to dialogue, creativity and industrial empowerment.

The 2026 China Jingdezhen International Ceramic Expo opened on October 18 and runs until October 22. As the first major ceramic event held after the inscription of the Jingdezhen Handicraft Porcelain Industry Sites on the UNESCO World Heritage List, it carries extraordinary cultural significance. Centered on the theme "Creativity, Innovation and Industrial Empowerment," the expo focuses on cultural inheritance, innovative development and international cultural exchange.

On October 19, 2026, the Jingdezhen Forum, themed "Dialogue between World Heritage and Civilizations," was held in Taoxichuan. The high-level main forum brought together global scholars, diplomats and heritage practitioners to discuss the preservation, inheritance and cross-cultural communication of China's millennia-old ceramic heritage, serving as a key platform for exchanging global insights on world heritage protection and cross-civilization dialogue. The "Jingdezhen Initiative" was released during the forum, aimed at moving ceramic culture from "one-way display" toward "deep resonance". The forum's theme rests on an explicit policy foundation: the report to the 13th Jingdezhen Municipal Party Congress calls for telling China's story well through exchange and mutual learning, leveraging platforms such as the Silk Road Tourism Cities Alliance, the International Ceramic Education Alliance and the UNESCO Chair in Ceramic Culture, deepening cooperation with World Heritage cities and Creative Cities, and strengthening the "Silk Road Porcelain Journey" exchange brand. The forum is not an isolated event but part of a systematic cultural strategy following the World Heritage inscription.

Jingdezhen's cultural vitality comes not only from official platforms but from a steadily growing community of young creators. More than 80,000 people are currently pursuing entrepreneurial ventures in Jingdezhen; Taoxichuan alone has gathered over 60,000 "Jingpiao" makers from across China and incubated more than 4,500 independent ceramic brands. Over the past decade, the city recorded a net population inflow of 136,000; among those who have started long-term businesses, more than half come from outside Jiangxi Province, including a notable number from overseas. The 2026 Jingdezhen Forum featured a dedicated Gen-Z Forum inviting young creators from China and abroad to share fresh, grassroots ideas, injecting modern perspectives and innovative thinking into traditional heritage communication. Taoxichuan, renovated from abandoned porcelain factories, hosts academic dialogue by day and transforms into a bustling night market after sunset, where local "Jingpiao" and international "foreign Jingpiao" set up stalls. Their original ceramic works, blending diverse artistic styles and techniques, offer a tangible expression of the cultural exchange discussed at the forum. This parallel structure—top-down academic dialogue alongside bottom-up grassroots creativity—gives Jingdezhen's heritage transmission a dual engine of intergenerational renewal and cross-cultural fusion.

Jingdezhen's international cultural role did not begin with the 2026 inscription. In December 2014, following a rigorous selection process, Jingdezhen joined the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and was designated a "City of Crafts and Folk Art". As a member of the Network, Jingdezhen has committed to organizing exchange and cooperation activities among member cities, promoting cooperation in industry and technology, exchanging creative production processes, and hosting summits and forums on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and crafts. The UNESCO Creative Cities Network covers seven creative fields: crafts and folk art, media arts, film, design, gastronomy, literature and music. The 2026 Expo and Forum can be understood as a concentrated expression of this long-term institutional international engagement after the World Heritage inscription: the World Heritage status provides a normative anchor of "outstanding universal value," while the Creative Cities Network provides a sustained cooperation framework and channels of exchange. Together, they establish an operational link between cultural protection and the creative economy in Jingdezhen.

The two October 2026 events in Jingdezhen present a model worth attention: inscription on the World Heritage List is not the endpoint of cultural work, but the starting point for transforming a city's local craft system into a resource for global civilizational dialogue. The Expo translates heritage into a tangible creative economy through trade, exhibition and industry matchmaking; the Forum situates heritage within a framework of cross-civilizational mutual learning through academic and policy dialogue; and the Gen-Z Forum together with the "Jingpiao" ecosystem ensures that heritage remains vital across generational change through youth practice. Jingdezhen's existing membership in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network provides institutional continuity and an international cooperation network for this process. For creativity and sustainable development, the Jingdezhen experience suggests that the sustainability of cultural heritage depends not only on the precision of conservation technologies, but on whether a city can embed heritage within open economic circuits, intergenerational creative practice and egalitarian civilizational dialogue.

(Photos via CGTN)

(Compiled from UNESCO Creative Cities Network, CGTN, CNS.cn, etc.)