China: The Great Wall
Score: 56

"It depends what part of the Great Wall one speaks of.The parts nearest to Beijing are overrun with tour buses and souvenir vendors. Fashionable upscale housing developments even pop up near the Great Wall. The wear and tear on the Wall is a major problem. Out west, the earlier Han portions of the Wall are at risk because of environment and time."

"A person could write a book starting at Shanghaiguan, where the wall rises from the sea, and ending at Jiayuguan, where it falls off a desert cliff. Most people will have visited one of the sites outside of Beijing. Badaling is a sea of KFCs and tour buses; Simatai recently ordered the destruction of its cable car to preserve its more austere settings. At tourist spots such as Badaling, it's a reconstructed photo-op. But in neighboring villages, a person can climb on the unrestored wall in solitude. The best new tourist site that encompasses geotourism benchmarks is Gubeikou, north of Beijing. The trails, signs, and restoration of the wall combine to give an educational and meaningful visit. Locals participate as seen in tour guides, ticket sellers, and trash-pickers. No badgering here, just respect for the relic and its visitors."

China: Lijiang and Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan
Score: 52

"The Naxi culture and Dongba religion have been used and abused for tourism. The architectural legacy of this city is preserved, but its capacity to handle human waste is surpassed. The old town is surrounded by ugly hotels controlled by major tour operators. The three gorges are magnificent, but tourism numbers grew too fast for the services sector to keep up."

"Lijiang is a beautiful historic town in a fine landscape setting. However, it has lost a great deal of its authenticity as tourism development has been directed towards the prettification of the buildings and adapting them to uses aimed at mass tourism. The open market, for example, now sells souvenirs rather than food and domestic goods."

"The facades of the buildings are authentic enough. However, a World Heritage site is more than just the buildings. The surrounding natural attractions are overused. There needs to be more effort to protect the area."

"Reconstruction and development has resulted in large sections of the old town losing its authenticity in terms of its patina, as well as dislocation of the original inhabitants of the Silk Route; falconeers have given way to boutique shops. The local need to learn Mandarin (and English) will inevitably cause the demise of the living Naxi Drongba language and culture."

"The Three Rivers region is under extreme threat, as this area is being surveyed for a series of dams, some of which will stop the last free-flowing river in Asia."

China: Qin Emperor Mausoleum (terra-cotta warriors), Xi'an
Score: 66

"The terra-cotta warriors are an overwhelming experience that is well worth the trek. The presentation and site are very well kept, and the museum is informative. Access to it is through Xi'an, a city well worth visiting for its wall, its Muslim district, and its mosque, even though, like most cities in China, it is being transformed very rapidly, and not necessarily in a beneficial way for the heritage districts."

"Visitors to the warriors normally stay in Xi'an, visit sites like the Ban Po village and the towers and markets of Xi'an, and have a day trip to the terra-cotta warriors. There has been good work to showcase models of the statues and explain them in many languages."

"The conservation work at the site is very serious and even world standard-setting …There has been no attempt to scale the infrastructure to manage the hordes of tourists.The experience is like going to a theme park with some archaeology in the middle of a lot of concrete."

"There is little aesthetic appeal in the site, as it resembles a circus, packed with touts grabbing your arm, blaring bullhorns, and large groups of tourists."

"The spiritual dimensions of the emperor's quest for immortality could be better explored as the backdrop to the warriors."

China: Suzhou town and gardens
Score: 60

"Somehow there is a sense in Suzhou that it is really just a tourist trap where the locals just want to pump you for your money. There is little interpretation on the site and few attempts to show the linkages of the gardens to the rest of Suzhou life. There is nothing about the silk industry, for example, for which the town is famous."

"The gardens themselves are beautiful and well kept but the age of the gardeners would suggest much may be lost if young well trained and paid horticulturalists are not found soon."

"The majority of the gardens do exhibit a high quality but are essentially oases in a traditional urban structure that is succumbing to pressures of overdevelopment. There are particularly inappropriate municipal prestige projects."

"Two-tier fees make the gardens more accessible to locals. While there are vendors at the exit of each garden, they are not generally permitted in the gardens.On holidays there can be overcrowding, but the families enjoying the gardens are an asset in themselves."

China/Tibet: Potala Palace, Lhasa and environs
Score: 46

"The Potala is one of the true architectural wonders of this world, and it still shines against the Tibetan sky. The palace is now a museum, not a living cultural institution. Entrance fees are steep, even for local Tibetans."

"The physical conservation of the buildings of the Potala Palace is excellent, and visitation to the Palace is well managed. However, there is no 'spirit of place' remaining in Lhasa because of the sustained and increasingly successful attempt to eradicate Tibetan culture. No longer are there any pilgrims around the Jokang. The religious articles market has disappeared, replaced by tourism souvenir shops. And the important pilgrimage route between the Jokang and the Potala is lined with plastic palm trees, cartoon cutouts, and all variety of consumer shops.Likewise the vernacular architecture of Lhasa has been replaced by faked stone and concrete versions."

"How to deal with 6,000 visitors daily, four times capacity? As a living relic, the Palace's interior is heavily policed with CCTV cameras and plainclothes officers, who seem as intent on watching the monks as the relics."

"Remaining parts of traditional vernacular neighborhoods in Lhasa are now protected, but damage is irreversible, and Lhasa is de facto a Han Chinese city. No social or cultural integrity. Aesthetic appeal mostly lost, although the Potala remains a majestic monument."