South China Karst

UNESCO Natural World Heritage site spanning Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi — the world's largest and most diverse tropical and subtropical karst landscape, including the Stone Forest, Libo karst and Guilin limestone towers.

The South China Karst was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in two phases — Phase I in 2007 (covering Shilin in Yunnan, Libo in Guizhou, and Wulong in Chongqing) and Phase II in 2014 (adding Guilin in Guangxi, Shibing in Guizhou, Jinfoshan in Chongqing, and Huanjiang in Guangxi). Together these seven clusters represent the world's largest and most diverse karst landscape, covering the principal morphological types of karst formation found across the tropics and subtropics.

The Stone Forest (Shilin) in Yunnan is a labyrinthine field of sharp grey limestone pinnacles up to 30 m tall, eroded over millions of years from marine sedimentary rock. The Libo karst in Guizhou displays the world's finest example of cone karst — a landscape of isolated conical hills rising from flat valley floors, draped in subtropical forest and punctuated by cave systems and underground rivers. The Wulong karst in Chongqing features three natural stone bridges (tiansheng sanqiao) among the largest in the world, along with the spectacular Furong Cave system.

Guilin and the Li River represent perhaps the most widely recognised karst landscape in China — the sequence of tall limestone towers (fenglin) reflected in the river and surrounding rice fields is one of the country's defining visual images. The Guilin landscape inspired Chinese landscape painting traditions for centuries and continues to appear on the 20-yuan banknote.

Each component site is separately visited and managed, spanning three provinces and covering a combined area of nearly 176,000 hectares.