Cultural relics are the most direct and objective narrators of history, carrying the cultural roots and spiritual genes of the Chinese nation. Cultural relic protection is not only a legal issue, but also a political task to maintain national cultural security and inherit national spirit. The revised Cultural Relics Protection Law in 2024 clearly stipulates that cultural relics work should implement the policy of "protection first, rescue first, rational utilization, and strengthened management", providing a basic guideline for cultural relics protection work in the new era. At present, cultural relics protection is facing prominent problems of high post restoration costs and poor results. The procuratorial organs need to fully recognize the important value of preventive public interest litigation and provide more proactive judicial guarantees for cultural relics protection through precise performance of duties. 1、 The difficulties in cultural relic protection and the necessity of conducting preventive public interest litigation. Currently, cultural relic protection is facing many practical difficulties, mainly reflected in two aspects. There is a dual dilemma of cost and effectiveness in post repair. The cost of post restoration of cultural relics is much higher than pre prevention, and is often constrained by factors such as difficulty in adapting materials, loss of traditional craftsmanship, and irreversible risks of restoration effects, resulting in the problem of "high investment but low effectiveness". In the restoration of wooden cultural relics from Liao tombs in Xuanhua, Hebei Province, due to insufficient compatibility between traditional rosin paraffin solution and modern resins, some cultural relics have deformed after restoration, which not only consumes a lot of funds but also fails to achieve the expected protection effect. Secondly, post event relief cannot recover the loss of the core value of cultural relics. The value of cultural relics depends on their intrinsic integrity and the original environmental context. Once damaged, the overall damage to their intrinsic value is difficult to compensate for. Taking ancient wooden buildings as an example, even if the "repair as old" technique is used to restore decayed or damaged components, the final result is only a carefully replicated "substitute". The "authenticity" carried by the original materials and ancient craftsmanship has been permanently lost, and the historical and cultural value of cultural relics is greatly reduced. Preventive prosecutorial public interest litigation can significantly reduce the comprehensive cost of cultural relic protection by promoting front-end governance in cultural relic protection work. For example, when the procuratorial organs discover that construction projects may endanger the safety of cultural relics, management units fail to fulfill their maintenance responsibilities, or there are safety hazards in the surrounding environment of cultural relics that have not caused substantial damage but risks have already emerged during their duties, they can consult with administrative organs or issue procuratorial suggestions to urge them to perform their duties in accordance with the law and eliminate risks. This model not only respects the principle of administrative priority, but also significantly saves judicial resources, making it the optimal path to achieve "prevention before it happens". 2、 Improving the quality and efficiency of preventive prosecutorial public interest litigation in the field of cultural relics protection requires precise definition of the applicable boundaries of preventive prosecutorial public interest litigation. The initiation of preventive prosecutorial public interest litigation should be based on professional judgment of "significant risks", and in the performance of duties, three aspects should be focused on: first, the importance of the public interest involved, second, the possibility of risk being transformed into actual damage, and third, the urgency and severity of the consequences of the damage. For the structural damage, environmental erosion, fire safety hazards, etc. that may be caused by the lack of daily maintenance of cultural relics, even if the damage results have not yet appeared, as long as it is assessed and confirmed that there is a real and significant risk of irreversible loss of cultural relic value, it meets the conditions for filing and supervision. The second is to scientifically define the scope of protected objects. The procuratorial organs need to use the Cultural Relics Protection Law and relevant judicial interpretations of public interest litigation as the basis to clarify that the supervised cultural relics protection objects not only include graded cultural relics, but also include cultural relics with historical, artistic, and scientific value that have not been graded. The protection scope should cover both immovable and movable cultural relics simultaneously, with equal emphasis on the public welfare protection of state-owned and non-state-owned cultural relics. Special attention should be paid to cultural relics that have not been graded but have outstanding value and are at risk of damage. In practice, the initiation boundary of preventive prosecutorial public interest litigation should be determined through comprehensive evaluation of cultural relics types, value levels, and risk levels. For wooden historical and cultural buildings, it is necessary to focus on investigating fire safety hazards; For densely populated cultural urban areas, it is necessary to focus on protecting the historical style and cultural integrity, and achieve precise allocation of judicial resources. Thirdly, it is necessary to clearly define multiple responsible parties. In the face of the diverse regulatory bodies for cultural relics protection, the procuratorial organs need to establish a responsibility recognition system based on relevant laws and regulations such as the Cultural Relics Protection Law: for immovable cultural relics, the protection and management organization or user unit shall be clearly defined as the direct responsible subject in accordance with the law; For non-state-owned cultural relics, it is necessary to define the owners and actual users as the first responsible persons for protection and restoration. At the same time, through public interest litigation, local governments should be urged to fulfill their regulatory responsibilities, and if necessary, the government should be encouraged to provide technical guidance, financial subsidies, and other support to achieve a coordinated effort of "supervision+support". For cultural relics that have not yet been approved and announced as cultural relics protection units, according to the principle of territorial management in Article 9 of the Cultural Relics Protection Law, local governments at or above the county level shall be clearly responsible for overall protection, and specific implementation shall be carried out to their respective cultural relics administrative departments or townships (streets) to ensure no blind spots in supervision. The fourth is to optimize the means of handling cases. When carrying out public interest litigation in the field of cultural relics protection, the procuratorial organs should strengthen professional cooperation. Experts in archaeology, architecture, materials science and other fields can be hired as specially invited prosecutor assistants or consultants to participate in on-site investigation, damage assessment and restoration plan demonstration, integrate professional research results into judicial practice, and ensure that the protection measures proposed by the procuratorial suggestions are scientifically feasible. To promote value transformation, while ensuring the safety of cultural relics, relevant units should be encouraged to plan special exhibitions, develop cultural and creative products, and create cultural tourism integration projects to enhance the public's sense of cultural gain. At the same time, cultural relics protection work should be given back, forming a virtuous cycle of "protection utilization re protection". We need to explore institutional innovation, study the conditions and procedures for the application of "prohibition orders" in the field of cultural relic protection, and promptly initiate judicial intervention for behaviors that may cause irreversible damage to cultural relics that are about to be implemented, in order to build a "pre firewall" for cultural heritage and improve the timeliness of protection. (Author affiliation: People's Procuratorate of Yidu City, Hubei Province) (News Agency)