Paths to Policy Sustainability for Protecting Cultural Heritage: A Quantitative Analysis of Conservation Policies for the Great Wall Within the “Instrument–Objective–Stakeholder” Framework

The sustainable protection of cultural heritage is essential for the intergenerational transmission of cultural diversity and represents a central theme in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on “heritage resilience governance”. To address the policy sustainability challenges of large-scale linear heritage governance, this study examines the characteristics and shortcomings of Great Wall Cultural Preservation (GWCP) policies during its steady implementation. To analyze how policy instruments are distributed, whether policy objectives are synergistic, and whether stakeholders’ participation is reasonable, this study uses GWCP policy texts issued by China from 2006 to 2024 as research objects and establishes a three-dimensional analytical framework (“instrument–objective–stakeholder”). With the help of the NVivo 20 tool, the study analyzes the policy texts in one dimension and multiple dimensions, and finds that China’s GWCP policy has shortcomings in sustainability governance, such as the imbalance in the use of policy instruments, the overflow of contextual policy instruments, the government’s over-exertion of force, the need to release the functional space of stakeholders, and the lack of attention to the synergy between the goals of conserving architectural heritage and safeguarding the Great Wall ethos. Based on these findings, the study proposes three targeted optimization recommendations. This GWCP case study offers developing nations insights into balancing heritage protection objectives under SDG 11.4 with local development needs.