Greece and China have pledged to strengthen their cultural collaboration with the renewal and expansion of a cooperation agreement related to underwater cultural heritage.
The renewal agreement, which encourages scientific cooperation and joint underwater archaeological research, was signed during a meeting between Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni and Chinese Tourism and Culture Minister Hu Heping, as part of the latter’s official visit to Greece.
During their meeting, the ministers also discussed the progress of the Piraeus Underwater Antiquities Museum project, which is planned to be housed in a silo on the port of Piraeus.
The project has a budget of 100 million euros, with financing secured by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Fund.
In addition to the museum project, the two ministers discussed other aspects of cultural collaboration that had been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes the Greece-China Year of Culture and Tourism 2023 that had many joint actions scheduled but did not take place.
“Our countries’ relations are based on a mutual respect for the ancient and particularly important cultures our people developed,” Mendoni said after the meeting.
“The Chinese side’s proposal to run the ‘Cultural Dialogue‘ scheme every two years, which didn’t run in 2021 and 2022 due to COVID restrictions, can only have positive results.”
For his part, Minister Hu Heping underlined that Greece and China are ancient civilisations that share common features.
“We have to make more efforts to collaborate, and the best way is to further develop our cultural relations,” he said.
Source: Newsbomb.gr
