[CPProt.net] CHINA: Case of a Pot Calling the Kettle Black To Halt ArtifactsLoss

Wed May 4 23:29:09 CEST 2005

 CHINA:
Case of a Pot Calling the Kettle Black To Halt Artifacts Loss 

Antoaneta Bezlova 

BEIJING, May 4 (IPS) - An official Chinese government campaign to reverse
the outflow of China's cultural and artistic heritage has sparked off an
impassioned debate about the pros and cons of free trade in art. It also
questions the dubious record of the Communist Party leadership in protecting
its cultural patrimony. 

Chinese officials have asked the United States government to share
responsibility for the depletion of Chinese artifacts in the country by
imposing restrictions on the import to the U.S. of all cultural property
over 95 years old. They argue that huge demand in the United States for
China's rich cultural heritage is the root cause for increased looting and
smuggling of artifacts and works of art. 

China is not the first country to ask the United States to impose import
restrictions on antiquities. The controversy surrounding China's request
stems from the fact that the list of items presented to U.S. customs
authorities as imports to be prohibited is far more sweeping than current
restrictions on export of cultural items from the country. 

Questions are also being raised as to whether China has done enough to halt
the loss of artifacts at home before seeking help from abroad. 

Existing Chinese regulations on exports of cultural relics stipulate that
only items dating from before 1795 (which marks the end of Qing emperor Qian
Long's reign), are prohibited from export. 

But the Chinese request for U.S. import restrictions though, is all
encompassing, covering works of art in virtually every media, from the
Palaeolithic era to the end of the Empire in 1911. 

The request is currently considered by the United States, which is
conducting its own investigation into China's art scene, including the
country's auction houses, antiquities markets and customs controls. 

The United States is bound by an art-importation law, the Convention on
Cultural Policy Implementation Act (CPIA), which was passed by the U.S.
Congress in 1983, after a decade of debate, to comply with a 1970 UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation)
convention. The law is aimed at resolving crisis situations in which the
cultural patrimony of a nation signatory to the U.N. agreement is deemed in
jeopardy. 

Few dispute the need to stem the flow of plundered artifacts from China. 

Last year China had 36 large-scale robberies of museums, tombs and temples
resulting in the loss of 223 antiquities, according to the State Cultural
Relics Bureau. The rate of successful thefts has increased by 80 percent
compared to the year before, the bureau estimates. 

But art dealers and collectors from both sides of the Pacific agree that
granting China its request would be tantamount to shutting down the U.S.
market in Chinese antiquities. 

Restrictions on imports of Chinese artifacts will have far-reaching
implications for the cultural lives of U.S. citizens and all foreigners,
they say, because it would deprive them of valuable opportunities to
appreciate and study China's astonishingly rich culture. 

''That would be a throwback to McCarthy-era restrictions of the 1960s, when
all Chinese art imported to the U.S. required proof that it was not owned by
a communist,'' James Lally, a renowned U.S. Asian art dealer, was quoted in
'Orientations' magazine -- a publication for art collectors. 

The 1950s and 1960s were an ugly time for thousands of U.S. citizens of
Chinese origin, clustered in Chinatowns across the country, who became the
target of anti-communist fervor ignited by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and aimed at
the Soviet Union and China. 

U.S. museum curators have described China's request as a shotgun solution
that would do little to stop or decrease looting and smuggling of artifacts.
But China's art dealers have been equally vocal in opposing the request as
flawed. 

''There is too much emphasis on control; on export restrictions,'' said Liu
Shangyong, an auction official with Rongbao Auction company, commenting on
China's policies on cultural relics. ''To eliminate looting and smuggling,
you have to promote openness and many channels for antiquities exchange
rather than simply blocking them." 

''It is more or less a measure of desperation, an admission that we cannot
tackle the problem at its source,'' said Zhang Deqin, a former official with
the State Cultural Relics Bureau. ''Since we cannot stop people from looting
relics inside the country, we have to ask foreign countries to supervise
their imports.'' 

Many argue that the Chinese government's commitment to investing in huge
infrastructure works is a far more substantial source of artifacts loss than
looting. The most obvious example of artifacts lost to construction and
development is the Three Gorges dam. The world's largest reservoir, going up
on the Yangtze River, has caused the inundation of numerous historic towns
and ancient tombs. Many artifacts from the area were only salvaged thanks to
private collectors. 

Government engagement in the art trade is being scrutinised, not the least
because of Communist China's unsavoury past record of preserving its
cultural patrimony. 

Until ten years ago, all buying and selling of Chinese antiquities abroad
were monopolised by the state. That meant that the Ministry of Foreign Trade
exported works of art to earn foreign currency that was later spent on
buying steel and cement to finance China's industrialisation. 

The exodus of art works had started with the collapse of the Qing empire in
1911 and in the modernisation drive that followed when valuable antiquities
were sold off at rock bottom prices. With the ascendance of the Communist
Party to power, what was left of China's vast cultural heritage was either
destroyed, or confiscated and exported. 

When the frenzied destruction of the Cultural Revolution (1956 to 1966) was
over, the state invited foreign dealers to visit the vast warehouses stacked
full of confiscated works of art and buy in bulk. By some accounts, in the
1980s China was exporting a million snuff bottles a year. 

Trying to reverse this wholesale pillaging of the country's cultural
heritage, China announced in April a large-scale programme aimed at
reclaiming national treasures from abroad. 

A quasi non-governmental organisation, the China Cultural Relics Recovery
Programme, has began work on recovery of items that were stolen, looted and
smuggled abroad between 1840 and 1945, before the founding of communist
China. 

This task force claims that Chinese cultural relics held by private
individuals abroad exceed the numbers of antiquities stashed away in foreign
museums by ten times. UNESCO figures suggest that 1.67 million Chinese
antiquities are owned by more than 200 museums in 47 countries. 

The official 'Xinhua' news agency quoted one senior cultural heritage
preservation expert, Xie Chensheng, as saying: ''The spiritual wealth can be
shared by the whole world, but not the ownership -- just like property
rights on software. Ownership of the scattered cultural treasures should lie
with the Chinese people." (END/2005)