A cultural heritage conference announced Tuesday that 651,700 new sites of immovable cultural relics have been discovered since the last national cultural relic survey in 1982, Guangming Daily reports. In all, China has located and registered 892,000 sites.

The number is more than twice the pre-survey estimate of 400,000. The huge difference can be attributed to use of more advanced devices to search for the relics and coverage of a wider area. China also introduced new concepts and standards to look for and define relics.

This is China's third national cultural relic survey. Since the last survey, 30,000 previously registered sites have disappeared because of urbanization, natural disasters and illegal exploitation. Erroneous data have also made it impossible to relocate some sites, and the new standards eliminated other entries from the list.

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