ABSTRACT
From the beginning, an incremental approach was developed, which seems appropriate to the rapid economic and social changes in China and to variations of the possibility of financing actions in China or organising professional training to France. The Chinese and French parties already have 20 years’ experience of common engaged practice. On Chinese side, the team is composed of urban planners from Tongji University who are both practitioners and academics. Several challenges were encountered during the duration of the cooperation. The first is the different institutional logics and standards in the two countries. The starting point of the Sino-French cooperation is based on urban heritage protection and regulations. On the Chinese side, urban heritage protection policy in cities and now in rural areas was then mainly under the supervision of the Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Development, previously the Ministry of Construction, which had a mutual agreement with its French counterpart, but not with the French Ministry of Culture.
