The 9th Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Cultural Expo opened on the morning of November 3 in Dunhuang, Gansu Province. About 1,200 guests are attending, including 307 from 58 countries and international organisations.
That is not the key number of this edition.
The real new variable appeared the day before: on November 2, the 2026 International Copyright Forum opened in the same city, co-hosted by China's National Copyright Administration and the World Intellectual Property Organization. WIPO Director General Daren Tang, Vice Minister of the Central Propaganda Department Jiang Hui and Gansu Governor Kong Shaoxun addressed the opening. A national-level expo built around cultural exchange has put copyright on the same footing as its exhibitions — a shift easily obscured by the scale figures.
Part One: Dunhuang on opening day
Themed "Strengthening Cultural Exchange, Promoting Mutual Learning among Civilisations", the expo runs from November 2 to 4. It features seven categories and 18 major events, including the opening ceremony, meetings and talks, a VIP tour of the exhibitions, cultural displays, performances, investment promotion and consumption drives, and Silk Road cultural tourism experiences.
Exhibition space totals about 18,000 square metres across five main zones: the Dunhuang Academy's achievements in building a "model" and "highland" for heritage protection, Gansu's cultural innovation achievements, Dunhuang medical texts and traditional Chinese medicine cultural products, a Belt and Road people-to-people exchange exhibition, and Dunhuang art. Together they present the latest results in world heritage protection and Dunhuang studies, along with the arts, folk customs and tourism goods of Belt and Road partner countries.
On the afternoon of November 2, Gansu Party Secretary Wu Xiaojun and Governor Kong Shaoxun met foreign guests and representatives of international organisations attending the expo. The guest list included WIPO Director General Daren Tang, WIPO Deputy Directors General Shen Changyu and Nzumkisi Kobo, head of the Egyptian Intellectual Property Office Hesham Mahmoud Azmi, director of the UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia Shahbaz Khan, a senior investment officer from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and a deputy governor of Russia's Tyumen Oblast.
A list drawn from the intellectual property system, appearing in the reception hall of a cultural expo. That detail is the footnote to this edition.
Part Two: A cultural expo starts doing the copyright maths
The 2026 International Copyright Forum runs for three days under the theme "Copyright and the Creative Industries in the Digital Intelligence Era — Protecting Cultural Heritage, Empowering Innovation and Creation". More than 400 participants are attending, including officials from WIPO and other international organisations, copyright and cultural officials from more than 40 countries, intellectual property and cultural counsellors from foreign embassies, and representatives of copyright associations and collective management organisations.
In his address, Daren Tang said Dunhuang is a major hub where Eastern and Western cultures meet, and that it is "entirely fitting to discuss copyright, creativity and culture in Dunhuang". He put the point more concretely: copyright is not merely a legal system that constrains the use of works, but carries the deeper value of encouraging creation and promoting exchange, "helping creators earn from their work and turn creativity into economic opportunity".
He cited developing economies as evidence: "Afrobeats and Latin pop keep topping global music charts, and filmmakers from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Indonesia are producing more and more works with global reach. The creative economy is opening new doors of opportunity for many developing and emerging economies."
Hesham Mahmoud Azmi, head of the Egyptian Intellectual Property Office, placed the emphasis on international cooperation: "Digital technology operates across borders and creative works circulate globally. This reality makes international cooperation even more important."
The Gansu copyright achievements exhibition, held alongside the forum, offers a local working model. The Dunhuang Academy has built an end-to-end copyright governance system for digital heritage resources, relying on blockchain authentication, AI monitoring and tiered licensing to run the "Digital Dunhuang Open Material Library" global platform. More than 20,000 heritage resources are now shared across borders in compliance with rights rules, reaching 78 countries.
Twenty thousand resources, 78 countries, blockchain authentication, tiered licensing — put together, these describe a replicable model: digitised heritage does not sit on a hard drive; it travels with clearly drawn rights.
The opening session also released a "copyright + folk art + tourism" case project jointly developed by the National Copyright Administration and WIPO, and the National Copyright Administration's 2026 "China Copyright Stories".
Part Three: The exhibitions are changing too, from display to transaction
This year's exhibition has been upgraded from the previous edition, with richer exhibits and more varied use of sound, light and digital technology. More telling is a phrase that tends to be overlooked — the expo is also holding a "Silk Road Colours" international cultural tourism goods fair, a Dunhuang IP achievements exhibition and a brand operation exhibition on a market-based footing.
Market-based means these shows are not state-funded displays but things meant to close deals. Dunhuang IP is moving out of caves and picture books into tourism goods, immersive experiences and brand licensing — precisely the chain the copyright forum is discussing.
The side programme points the same way: the 2026 Dunhuang Forum, a training programme for young sinologists from Gansu, traditional Chinese medicine experiences and field study tours. The translation and the trading of cultural content are broken into steps people can join and pay for.
Part Four: Where the ninth edition stands
Since the first edition in 2016, the Dunhuang expo has run eight times, drawing more than 20 foreign political figures and representatives of international organisations to speak at its openings, and nearly 10,000 Chinese and foreign guests from more than 120 countries, regions and international organisations.
The scale curve has flattened. What is genuinely different in the ninth edition is that it has begun to answer a second question: can the people who came, and the things on display, leave behind assets that can be authenticated, licensed and traded?
How many people an expo attracts is a measure of its reach. Getting them to take something away — with the rights properly sorted — is a measure of its industrial weight.
At its ninth edition, the Dunhuang expo has started on the second.