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The Great Wall, dubbed the symbol of the nation's spirit, is facing a growing threat to its facade from the country's burgeoning tourist industry, experts said recently.

To protect the authenticity of the mammoth structure, which boasts a history of more than two thousand years, the Beijing Administrative Bureau of Culture Relics on July 16 signed a memorandum on conservation with the International Friends of the Great Wall, a Hong Kong-based group aiming to protect the environment along the Great Wall.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is also taking part.

"This co-operation will bring domestic and international attention and assistance to what is probably the largest cultural relic protection challenge in China," said Kong Fanzhi, vice-director of the municipal bureau.

"Increasing tourism, richer citizens, more cars, more leisure time and cheap development opportunities near the Great Wall have all been encouraged by the municipality's counties and townships but threaten to blight more and more wallscapes north of Beijing," said William Lindesay, founder and director of International Friends and a trekker of nearly 2,500 kilometres of the wall in 1987.

"Litter, graffiti and illegal constructions are just the tip of the iceberg that poses physical and aesthetic damage to the Great Wall and its natural setting."

Beijing has 629 kilometres of wall, and "the cultural landscape of the Great Wall" within it has been included by the US-based World Monuments Fund on its "2002 List of the World's Most 100 Endangered Sites," Kong said.

Municipal officials said they are striving to strike a balance between preventing parts of the wall from collapsing and preserving its authenticity.

The city is expected to issue its first regulation on Great Wall protection later this year in a move that should deter more damage, said Kong.

Edmund Moukala, programme officer for culture at UNESCO's representative office to east Asia, said the Great Wall, a gigantic world heritage site, is being damaged, physically and aesthetically, by human beings rather than natural deterioration.

"A saturated tourist industry is a disaster to the heritage site," Moukala said. "We should first educate people, especially youths, about appreciating the value of the Great Wall to protect it."