At the opening ceremony of the 2012 mayoral forum on historical, culturally prominent towers in China and the 9th annual meeting on famous towers, 11 cities signed the "Changsha Declaration" on protecting historical, cultural towers but did not cover a previous application for world heritage status, which aroused a lot of controversy, the Xinhua News Agency, reported on Nov 3.

The 11 cities that signed the declaration are Yueyang (home of the Yueyang Tower), Wuhan (the Yellow Crane Tower), Nanchang (the Teng Wang Pavilion), Penglai (Penglai Pavilion), Yongji ( Stork Tower), Kunming (Grand View Pavilion), Nanjing (Yuejiang Tower), Changsha (Tianxin Pavilion ), Xi'an (Bell Drum Tower), Ningbo (Tianyi Chamber), and Hangzhou (Chenghuang Pavilion).

Huang yuan, the vice-chairman and secretary general of the Chinese Relics society, said that the key thing about the Changsha Declaration on historical, culturally prominent towers is that it, "Increases exchanges and cooperation of cities and establishes a means of protection for China's prominent towers.”

Previously, at a press conference organized by the Changsha municipal government it was announced that, in addition to the Chenghuang Pavilion in the city of Hangzhou, the other 10 towers would jointly apply for world heritage status and representatives of the 10 cities would sign the Changsha Declaration of China's 10 prominent towers joint application for United Nations cultural heritage status, which triggered a major discussion about the "new heritage" move.

According to those in charge of the China Heritage Society protection of prominent towers, the joint application for world heritage status is still in the coordination phase.