China's museums in no state to preserve valuable relics

• Source: Global Times
• [22:18 March 15 2010]
• Comments

By Yao Le

Since the middle of the 19th century, plenty of China's cultural relics have been taken overseas. Now in more than 200 museums in 47 countries and regions across the world, over 1.6 million cultural relics taken from China are on display. The number of artifacts in private hands is far beyond this.

There were three main causes of China's great loss of cultural relics: Being looted by foreign countries, trickery by foreigners and theft by locals. Foreign plunder and skulduggery are rarely seen today, and the third reason largely explains why many artifacts still disappear.

However, it was mainly the first two channels that brought about China's loss of cultural relics in the past.

Take some most calamitous incidents. The Anglo-French Allied Force set the Old Summer Palace on fire and looted its contents in 1860; the Eight-Power Allied Forces plundered Beijing in 1900; private explorers from Britain, France, Russia and Japan bribed the local custodian for the cultural relics of the Dunhuang Grotto for decades after 1907.

It's understandable that many call for the recovery of such artifacts, but this is hardly feasible. The so-called recovery refers to unconditionally taking back the historical relics through legal and diplomatic measures, rather than trade.

The standpoint among many Chinese is that these relics have belonged to China since the beginning. Therefore, it's completely unnecessary to pay for them.

A prerequisite of the recovery is that we need to have adequate evidence to prove these cultural relics originally belonged to China. Sometimes when dealing with cases in which national treasures were stolen and sold, we can provide related evidence.

However, we cannot provide an accurate information list of historical relics lost in a war-torn empire with extremely chaotic management of cultural relics. No such data exists.

Moreover, invading countries wouldn't leave written evidence when looting treasures in wartime. Even if an agreement was signed, there was no signature by recipient countries of the cultural relics.

As a result, it's almost impossible to recover those cultural relics through legal channels. Even if the cultural relics return home, their fate is not optimistic. The protection of cultural relics in Chinese museums is often poor.

Museums in Beijing, Shanghai and other big cities have adequate funding and personnel, as well as the advanced technology needed to preserve artifacts well. But more local museums protect relics weakly, if at all.

They'd rather spend money to decorate exhibition halls than construct storehouses, plus their funds are often insufficient. The funds that many museums receive from local governments are just enough for employees' wages.