国立公園内不法開発の活断層の上に住んで地震を起こして周りに大迷惑をかけていても
平気でいるこの基地外やくざ都市の芦屋のやくざにからまれたら大変。
もしくはあの部落民まんせーの「海人はガラ悪いでー」と年中わめいて
日本人を陥れようとする反日のチョンの兵庫県警にタイホされても大変。
記事は更新されてやがてなくなるので、一応貼り付けとく。
実際に反日の中国人社会では問題になっているわけ。
私が部落民いじめのために言っているのではないことをここに証明しておく。


THE HUNT FOR STOLEN CHINESE RELICS
Missing treasures, rising nationalism 
Along with China's emerging position in the world has come the will,
and the knowledge, to claw back looted artefacts

By Larry Teo 

COMMENTARY  
Jewels in China's cultural crown: A Shang dynasty elephant jar (above)
smuggled out of the country more than a century ago - now in France's
Guimet Museum - and a scene from an admonition scroll (below) showing
royal ladies with a palace instructress. The scroll can be seen - at
the British Museum.


WHAT can China do to recover the art treasures seized by foreign
troops and collectors when the country was on its knees and looting
was rampant more than a century ago?

The question is no longer an academic one.

As China grows in strength and influence, it is almost certain to
start pressing for the return of its historical treasures.

This desire to regain cultural artefacts is fuelled, among other
things, by rising nationalist sentiments.

While there has yet to be a coordinated national effort to recover the
countless number of items stolen by troops of the erstwhile invaders,
Chinese who care enough are already thinking - and acting - on the
issue.

Principal among those invaders were Britain, France and Japan, whose
main looting efforts occurred during the closing years of China's Qing
Dynasty (AD 1644 to 1911).

 
'The fate of our art treasures should reflect the international
stature of our country,' the honorary president of the Chinese Society
for the Protection of Cultural Relics, Mr Xie Chensheng, told a recent
forum.

'When China was weak and being kicked around, our forefathers could
only look on as others seized our treasures and shipped them abroad,'
he said.

'But the times have changed. Since we can now hold our heads up in the
world, we must take back what is rightly ours.'

Mr Ma Baoping, a member of the one-year-old Cultural Relics Recovery
Programme, which is supported by private corporations committed to
retrieving Chinese treasures from abroad, said the losses had left
many blanks in China's history that needed to be filled in.

'Since the answers are to be found in those plundered objects, we must
get them back and study them,' he said.

'The duty of retrieval must be borne by all the Chinese people.'

Some of the most precious items - such as the Peking Man fossils,
which are said to contain clues on the origin of the Chinese race -
are almost impossible to locate.

Many others are known to be housed in Western museums such as the
British Museum, France's Guimet and the New York Metropolitan.

Over the years, the bulk of Chinese art treasures have found their way
into these places.

They are either donated to these museums, or bought by them from
collectors who in turn bought them from descendants of the looters and
thieves.

A book compiled by Chinese archaeologist Zhang Zicheng says that among
these museum treasures are many that were carted away by British and
French troops when they burnt down Beijing's Old Summer Palace in
1860.

There was also widespread looting of the Forbidden City and royal
palaces by an eight-nation expeditionary force which raided the
Chinese capital in 1900.

Other items of significance sorely missed by the Chinese are also in
these Western museums. For example, the 600-year-old Yongle
Encyclopaedia; Buddhist relics from the Dunhuang grottoes; books and
paintings from the ancient kingdoms of Loulan, Milan and Khotan in
north-west China; and tortoise shells and cow bones bearing pictorial
inscriptions called 'jiaguwen'.

'The items we are most interested in are by and large scattered among
this handful of museums,' recovery programme director Zhang Yongnian
told The Straits Times.

'I'm only referring to the documented ones.

'During visits to these places, our experts were constantly surprised
to find exhibits which, until then, they did not even know were in
existence.

'That shows that in the vaults of these museums lie an indeterminate
number of Chinese artefacts, every one of which could help shed much
light on our past.

'With so much to take back, we must therefore persevere and never
slack in our effort.

'It pains us to see them placed at the disposal of foreigners.' 

In 1995, the Chinese government acceded to a United Nations Convention
on Stolen and Illegally Exported Cultural Objects.

In so doing, Beijing acquired the right, 75 years from then, to demand
the return of treasures illegally taken from the country.

Beijing has since declared that this right extends to objects stolen
or illegally exported prior to its signing the 1995 convention.

While the recovery programme is ostensibly a non-governmental
undertaking, it no doubt has Beijing's blessing to serve as unofficial
'spokesman' on the issue of lost artefacts - and to be its executor as
and when required.

China's world treasure hunt is so controversial, in fact, that the
Chinese government has chosen to make its weight felt only when
diplomatic intervention is required or if international law is
involved - such as in 1998 when it pressured Britain to help recover
more than 3,000 items smuggled to London a few years before.

In 2000, when the Hong Kong branches of Christie's and Sotheby's
planned to auction off three bronze animal heads, the State Bureau of
Cultural Relics tried to put a stop to it, saying the sales
constituted an insult to China.

When the bureau failed in its bid, it issued a statement declaring its
right to retrieve all treasures looted when China was in turmoil.

Beijing did more than merely paying lip service to the notion of
retrieval rights. Taking its cue, the Poly Group, a state-owned
conglomerate which helped to launch the recovery programme, bought the
three pieces for US$4 million (S$8.8 million) at auction.

The three heads, from a collection of 12 crafted after the animals of
the Chinese zodiac, were part of the loot taken by British and French
troops in 1860.

Most Chinese regard their recovery as an imperative. 

Last year, a fourth bronze head was brought home under the auspices of
the recovery programme.

It had been bought with HK$6 million (S$1.3 million) donated by Hong
Kong tycoon Stanley Ho.

'We are now planning to get back another four bronze heads, which we
have already located,' said Mr Zhang.

The archaeologist is not content to rest on these laurels, however.

He knows that what he wants back most is the hardest to retrieve. He
also kmows that at this point, all the money in the world makes not a
jot of difference.

In late 2002, 18 Western museums, including the British, the Paris
Louvre and the New York Metropolitan, issued a joint proclamation
declaring how important and valuable global museums were to mankind.

In itself, that self-serving statement amounted to a slight on lesser
museums, especially those in developing countries.

But its subtext was intended to convey the idea that with global
museums like them around, the return of relics to their original
countries was unnecessary and uncalled for.

Asked by The Straits Times why his museum would never let go of any
possessions seized from foreign lands, a spokesman for the New York
Metropolitan simply regurgitated the 2002 proclamation.

Saying the statement 'by no means suggested' the countries of origin
were less capable of preserving and exhibiting the artefacts, Mr
Harold Holzer added: 'Their staying with us, however, gives people a
chance to see works from cultures different from their own.'

He cited the recent desecration and losses sustained by Iraq's
national museum saying: 'The danger of repatriation has been made
painfully clear with the plunder of the Baghdad Museum: the great
works of ancient Iraqi art that survive are all in the Louvre, the
British Museum, and the Met.'

His response is hardly surprising, given that not only one, but many
countries now want back the art treasures snatched at gunpoint when
Western imperialism was at its height.

In recent years, Greece has been asking the British Museum to return
the Elgin marbles - famous sculptures named after a British earl who
had them shipped to London in 1803.

Egypt too has asked for its stolen relics, especially mummies, held by
museums in Britain.

Cambodia has asked for its artefacts held in France.

All the requests have been rebuffed, not least because the museums
fear that yielding to one would throw open the floodgates to even more
claims.

Western political leaders, ever ready to claim the moral high ground,
are no more forthcoming.

Last July, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair was asked by the
Chinese about the return of 23,000 pieces now in the British Museum,
he reportedly quipped:

'Sorry about that. It's something that happened in history.' 

The international record of repatriation of looted items to their
rightful owners is not all bad, however.

In 1951 and 1954, during the heyday of the communist brotherhood, the
former Soviet Union returned 64 volumes of the Yongle Encyclopaedia to
China.

In 2002, more than 3,000 cultural relics were returned from overseas,
according to the Chinese Society for the Preservation of Cultural
Relics. But such acts of honesty are eclipsed by the brazen attitudes
of foreign collectors and museums.

'One argument Western museums like to throw up is that they alone can
preserve the relics well.

'This contention won't stand up to scrutiny as most countries nowadays
have the know-how and facilities to do an equally good, if not better,
job,' said Mr Zhang.

'Besides, the countries of origin are eager to study returned relics
for their historical and aesthetic value. They can only be expected to
do a better preservation job, not worse.

'The wanton madness in Iraq was a rare tragedy encouraged by war.'

Mr Zhang also finds it a waste that many Chinese treasures in Western
museums are locked away in storerooms.

Having been turned down so many times by Western museums, what
recourse is left for China?

Hope is now placed on world bodies such as the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation to act as a
go-between, but even this path has proved difficult.

Countries with the most valuable Chinese relics, particularly the US
and Britain, are not signatories to the 1995 convention.

Asked what Unesco could do to advance China's cause, spokesman Guido
Carducci told The Straits Times: 'The farthest we have gone to resolve
this kind of issue is the setting up of an inter-governmental
committee. But it has only a 'good offices' function and does not
settle disputes in a legal sense.'

Mr Zhang is less than sanguine: 'None of the Unesco conventions are
legally binding, so China would rather bet on gaining as many
supporters as possible worldwide. This at least would strengthen our
claim against the appropriators.

'I'm sure the day will come when no one could again brush aside our
right.'