Abstract: With 45 world heritage spots distributed in China, the conservation of world heritage needs to be paid more attention to because of multiple threats. The paper used the data acquired from the World Heritage Centre, with the help of statistic analysis tools and ArcGIS, to analyzed the state of the conservation of the world heritage in China and the threats in the protection of the world heritage. The paper utilized the 'hot spots' analyzing tool to analyze the most threatened world heritage in China and the trend of the number and location of the hot spots of the most threatened world heritage in China from 2001 to 2011. The number of the hot spots increased from 3 to 9 during 2001 and 2007, and they were mainly distributed in the intersection of Tibet autonomous region and Yunnan Province and Beijing. In 2011, as more attention paid on the conservation of world heritage, the number of the hot spots became 4. Influence of economic construction, the lack of protection and management measures and the system planning, fall behind in the formulation and implementation of related laws and regulations to avoid harmful acts, excessive entertainment, social and natural conditions changes are the main threats that lead the damage of the value of the world heritage spots. The paper used the TIOP to measure the security of the world heritage in each province based on the threat intensity coefficients. The score of the TIOP can measures the state of the conservation of the world heritage in China at provincial level. The results can give us an impressive recognization of the security of the world heritage in China. The security of the province with world heritage distribution can be divided into four degrees, namely safe, low degree of security, dangerous and threatened. The region in different degrees had been changing, and the number of the region in danger increased from 1 to 3 during 2001 and 2011. The distribution of the security of the TIOP of each province falled into two sections. The southwestern and the eastern were the regions with worsening security of the world heritage, and the central region was the one with better security. The general security in China was relative good, but the trend of the security of world heritage was worrying, and we need to take measures, especially the laws and management plan, to protect our world heritage.Anyway the research on the security of world heritage is lack of practical investigation and the main results are obtained from the data acquired from the World Heritage Center. The following research should take the world heritage site as the study region to excavate the threats that influence the security of world heritage in China.

Key words: World Heritage, security pattern, spatial-temporal evolution, threats, China