China will take every possible step to protect its old and rare
books and retrieve those scattered among other countries, an
official document has said.
These books and documents, an indispensable part of Chinese
history, lack proper preservation and management, says a State
Council document posted on the government website yesterday.
The document also asks authorities to better protect such books
by conducting a nationwide survey examining their numbers and
conditions and improving the preservation environments and repair
technology.
Smuggling of such books should be stopped, the document warns,
emphasizing that "in accordance with international conventions and
agreements, China will demand the return of the books taken out of
the country illegally."
It's not clear how many old and rare books have been taken
overseas, but a rough estimate shows over 3,000 of them, along with
2,000 pedigrees, are in the US.
Museums in Japan, Britain, and Ireland also have a large number
of such books, including the remains of the world's earliest
encyclopedia, the Great Encyclopedia of Yongle or
Yongle Dadian.
In addition to books, foreign countries also have many Chinese
paintings, sculptures, and scrolls of calligraphy. UNESCO figures
show that about 1.63 million Chinese relics are scattered among 218
museums in 47 countries, which accounts for less than 10 percent of
the world's total private collections of Chinese artifacts.
“Some of the relics have been returned through legal channels,
but the majority were lost, particularly those looted by foreign
invaders after the Opium War in 1840 and pieces smuggled out of
tombs and museums,” the deputy secretary-general of the Chinese
Fund for the Recovery of Overseas Relics, Niu Xianfeng, said.
"China has been trying consistently to get the looted and
smuggled books and artifacts back, but the progress has been
slow."
Since 1980, China has signed several international conventions
and bilateral protocols with countries on the protection of
cultural heritage, such as the Convention on Stolen or Illegally
Exported Cultural Objects, which entitles China to demand the
return of the relics smuggled out of the country illegally.
The nation hopes to gain international cooperation by liaising
with the International Criminal Police Organization and the World
Customs Organization.
But these efforts have resulted in only a few successful cases.
"The return of the relics demands a complete portfolio of the
artifacts, including the evidence to show that it was smuggled out.
And because of historical reasons, we often don't have such
materials," Niu explained.
Foreign museums are also often unwilling to return the relics.
In 2002, eighteen leading museums of the world, including the
Louvre Museum in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York, jointly declared they would not return any ancient artifacts
to their countries of origin.
(China Daily January 31, 2007)