Time to right past wrongs and return stolen goods
- Source: Global Times
- [22:15 March 15 2010]
- Comments
Illustration: Liu Rui
By Barry Ball
Last year I took my Chinese girlfriend with me to the UK for a visit. While we were staying in London, we spent an afternoon wandering around the British Museum, one of the best free tourist attractions in the world.
She was most surprised that there was no entrance charge and equally impressed by the array of priceless items on display. My favorite has always been the Elgin Marbles, taken by Britain from Greece between 1801 and 1812, which Greece now wishes returned.
I have visited the Acropolis and other parts of Greece and seen similar looking weathered marble columns and corroded statues lying around on the ground at many different sites apparently disregarded. I felt that we were viewing these beautiful and unique relics in a protected environment.
My girlfriend was mesmerized by the wonder and beauty on display, but her real interest lay in the China exhibits hall, which displays many beautiful works of Chinese culture. We have had many heated discussions back home in Beijing regarding the Sino-British wars in the nineteenth century.
Like many Chinese, she still feels acutely pained by the ransacking of Chinese treasures and artifacts by Europeans during that period. My usual response had always been "time and place," since throughout history dominant nations have always pillaged those countries which did not have the military strength to resist their demands.
But given Britain's involvement in forcing open trade in opium on the Chinese, one might argue that the British were the originators of the international drugs trade – and all its profits.
Famous Hong Kong firms such as Jardine Matheson were originally nothing more than 19th-century narcotraficantes, their initial profits based on drug smuggling backed by the military might of Victorian Britain.
No country can apologize or pay compensation for all the sufferings inflicted in the past. But particularly egregious and recent cases lay a moral burden upon Western powers that we shouldn't forget.
Gains from this should cause deep embarrassment to modern governments, and we should make amends. Returning artifacts is one part of this.
The problem exists, of course, that many of these artifacts are in private hands, and stripping somebody of their property because their great-great-grandfather bought stolen goods is hardly fair or just.
But publicly held artifacts are a much easier case. Having now lived in China for 10 years, I have become very conscious and admiring of the deep respect for their country's heritage held by all Chinese. Their knowledge and love of their motherland's history, cultural development and creative arts is way beyond anything that one would find with the average person in the UK.
For a proud people to have suffered the loss of so much national heritage to imperial invaders must have been a severe insult.
One might argue that all archeological objects or priceless relics should be the property of all humanity to cherish, appreciate and aid the understanding of our own development.
Were it not for the European adventurers and archeologists of the 19th century, exploring their curiosity for the ancient world, many of the relics displayed in museums around the world may not even have been discovered, yet alone preserved. China's own record of cultural preservation during the 20th century, with three-quarters of Beijing heritage sites destroyed between 1966- 1976, is hardly laudable.
But when these items are obtained through theft and coercion and forcibly removed from a country that highly values their heritage and symbolism, every effort should be made to restore the status quo.
Assuming that the original country can demonstrate their willingness and ability to offer the same level of preservation that the foreign museums have demonstrated for over a century then those relics that are a fundamental part of a nation's cultural development should indeed be returned.
