Although China Ranks 15th for Most Amount of Museums, Beijing Is Home to the Second-Most Visited

Earlier this year, Statista published a number of statistics sourced from UNESCO about the countries with the largest number of museums, and those that attracted the largest number of visitors, annually. More recently, that data was picked up by the folks over at studyinginswitzerland.com (check out the full article for more number-crunching), who compiled it into some fancy little infographics which reveal a couple of interesting tidbits about China, and Beijing, specifically.

As of May 2020, China was home to 1,030 museums, earning it the 15th spot on a list of 20 countries with the most museums. While it may be a far cry from the US’s first-place rank of 33,082, it’s worth noting that even second-place Germany and third-place Japan are nowhere near reaching that first-place status, with 6,257 and 5,738, respectively.

And yet, despite having a fraction of the institutions, as of 2019, Beijing’s National Museum of China was the second-most visited in the world, having attracted 7.4 million guests, roughly 2.2 million less than Paris’s The Louvre, which came in first place with 9.6 million. Aside from that, of the 20 most visited museums worldwide, China is home to another four in the list – the Shanghai Technology and Science Museum (11), Nanjing Museum (14), Zhejiang Museum (15), and Beijing’s China Science and Technology Museum (18) – which host a collective 24 million visitors per year.

While this news may be something for China to celebrate, it does come one year after UNESCO released its stunning report on the global state of museums as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world. For fans of art and culture, that report presented a dire message as roughly 90 percent of institutions had been forced to temporarily close. Similarly, in a separate report issued by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), of the 1,600 museums surveyed, around 13 percent stated that they would have to shut their doors permanently, while 19.2 percent were unsure about their future. What’s more, the coronavirus came at a time when museums were actually enjoying meteoric growth, having increased by 60 percent in a mere eight years, to reach an estimated 95,000 by 2020.

At the time, Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay explained that “This report not only provides a better understanding of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on museum institutions and the challenges they will face following the health crisis, but also explores the ways to support museums in the aftermath of the crisis,” adding, “There is an urgent need to strengthen policies that support this sector, which plays an essential role in our societies for the dissemination of culture, education, social cohesion, and support to the creative economy."

So, want to do your part in supporting Beijing’s numerous museums? You can start by checking out some of our articles about the capital’s quirkiest museums here, here, and here. Then simply dive into the comprehensive glory that is our museum directory.

READ: How do You Solve a Problem Like Closed Borders? Sarah Keenlyside on How Travel Companies Can Adapt

Images: CGTN, studyinginswitzerland.com