The Protected Area System Dominated by National Park: Connotation, Categories, and Establishment Path

Establishing "a protected area system dominated by national park" is currently a significant strategy adopted by Chinese governments to realize the goal of building ecological civilization and "Beautiful China", and also one of the directions and goals to restructure the protected area system of China in the future. At present, the Chinese government is just starting to build its national park system, and it is practically very urgent and significant to discuss what the connotation of the national-park-dominated protected area system is, what categories it covers, and how to build it. It is argued in this paper that the domination status of national parks in the future protected area of China is embodied not in its amount, but mainly in the top value of what they are designated to reserve, the highest strictness of protection, its domination in area, the level of protection, and its advantage in providing nature education for the public over other protected area categories. Based on the existing studies and following the principles of being in accordance with the IUCN standards, being compatible with the existing classification and the least re-structuring cost, the author proposes a modified protected area system, which is composed of 3 categories, 6 sub-categories, and 14 types of protected area. With regard to the establishment path of the new system, the following suggestions are proposed, which follow the sequence: ① identify the potential area for establishing national parks, either from up to bottom or from bottom to up; ② figure out the list of candidate national parks through scientific consideration; ③ highlight the core value of candidate national parks and confirm their management border; ④ forge a team of professional management staff; ⑤ make development plan and form guarantee mechanisms; ⑥ periodically monitor and assess the management performance of national parks.