Intangible Cultural Heritage Corridor Networks and Structural Types in China: Spatial Patterns and Their Correspondence

The protection of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) has now evolved from a conventional mode based on project application and inventory management to a new stage of spatial, networked, and regionally integrated governance. China is moving from list-based management toward spatial governance. This study examines ICH spatial patterns, potential corridor configurations, and regional resource characteristics within an integrated analytical framework. This study examined 3610 sub-items of national ICH across the country. We employed the nearest-neighbor index (NNI) and kernel density estimation (KDE) to characterize the spatial distribution of ICH, the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model to identify potential corridor networks, and Ward’s hierarchical clustering to classify provincial ICH resource structures. The findings indicate that: (1) National ICH items exhibit significant spatial clustering (NNI = 0.317), with differences in spatial distribution across the five batches and a greater representation of central, western, and border regions in later batches. (2) Potential corridors form an interconnected network in eastern China and exhibit a linear, bead-like pattern in western China, broadly corresponding to the spatial gradient of lower resistance in the east and higher resistance in the west. (3) Ward’s hierarchical clustering identifies six groups of provincial-level regions with distinct ICH category-frequency profiles. Their spatial distributions are not necessarily contiguous, indicating that similar resource profiles may occur in geographically separated regions. (4) The potential corridor network and provincial ICH resource groups reveal regional differences in the resource characteristics associated with corridor configurations. Eastern corridors connect regions with diverse ICH resources, whereas western corridors predominantly link more dispersed source regions across provinces with different resource profiles. These findings provide a spatial reference for the coordinated protection of ICH across administrative boundaries and the spatial organization of cultural heritage resources, offering insights for the planning of national cultural parks and the integrated development of ICH and tourism.