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Advocacy
Say YES to China
What are the issues?
China's cultural heritage endangered
The devastating effects of illegal excavations
Huge U.S. market for Chinese antiquities
China responds
Reasons to support China's request
SAFE supports China's request
The public supports China's request
Every day, looting and plundering of priceless cultural treasures continue all over the world. The devastation of China's cultural heritage caused by the illicit antiquities trade is perhaps among the most severe. Tomb raiders, smugglers, and citizens driven by poverty, ignorance, and especially greed ravage the world's second largest country and destroy its most valuable non-renewable resource: China's 7,000-year cultural history. This activity is fueled by the seemingly insatiable appetite for the exotic and beautiful at any cost— particularly in Western countries, such as the United States.
To meet this increasing demand, the illegal plundering of China's archaeological sites has reached a fevered pitch. While this complex situation calls for a wide range of complementary solutions, one effective way to stem the traffic in looted cultural material is the implementation of import restrictions. In other words: sever the chain of supply and demand.
Join SAFE's petition in support of China's request. Read here about the details of the request. Please feel free to add your own comments. SAFE presented nearly 500 petitions on February 17th 2005, at the public session.
China's cultural heritage endangered
- Tomb raiders destroy one-third of China's national treasures (May 12, 2006, newkerala.com)
- Saving Chinese Artifacts: A Slow Fight (April 1, 2006, The New York Times)
- Tomb raiders at Shaanxi Province leave little for archaeologists (June 15, 2005 Channelnewsasia.com)
- Relic theft from museums now a booming business (March 1, 2005, Taipei Times)
- Cultural relics see high-tech crime risk (February 28, 2005, China Daily)
- Tomb raiders crack 2000-year-old vault (February 10, 2005, The Australian)
- Ancient artifacts under threat, government says (Dec 22, 2004, Taipei Times)
- Greed and opportunity combine as China bleeds its cultural heritage (June 4, 2004, Daily Times)
- 220, 000 tombs in China have been invaded over the past five years (Time magazine Asia edition; Oct. 27, 2003 issue of the US edition)
- 98% of all profits from the illicit art trade go to middlemen and dealers (Time magazine Asia edition; Oct. 27, 2003 issue of the US edition)
- Ruthless art thieves are stripping cultural sites of precious artifacts, then shifting them to smugglers and dealers who hawk them overseas. (Spirited Away by Hannah Beech (Time magazine Asia edition; Oct. 27, 2003 issue of the US edition)
- A Xi'an gang broke into the 2,000-year-old tomb of China's Empress Dou using dynamite, and an air blower powered by a portable generator (Oct. 20, 2003 issue of Time magazine)
- The Illicit Trade in Chinese Antiquities by Melvin Soudijn & Edgar Tijhuis (July 2003 IIAS Newsletter)
- Ancient tombs have been ransacked for the second time in two years (Silk Road Theft by Jarrett A. Lobell Volume 56 Number 3, May/June 2003, Archaeology Magazine)
- Tibet's treasures have inspired artists, authors, celebrities—and thieves. (Stealing Beauty by Ron Gluckman, November, 2002, Travel and Leisure.com)
- 1,500-year-old tomb murals looted from Jian (Mural Flap, by Daniel Kane, Volume 55 Number 1, January/February 2002, Archaeology Magazine)
- Illicit Excavation in Contemporary China by He Shuzhong. Originally published in Trade in Illicit Antiquities: The Destruction of the World's Archaeological Heritage (Brodie, Neil, Jennifer Doole, and Colin Renfrew (editors), 2001), He Shuzhong is the Founder of CHP Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Research Centre (CHP).
- The Dulan County Tibetan Royal Tomb Group in Qinghai province was listed by World Monuments Watch as one of the world's One Hundred Most Endangered Sites 2000 (Dulan Listed by World Monuments Watch by Bruce Doar, February 2000, China Archaeology and Art Digest)
- The antiquities market is destroying China's Buddhist statuary (Off With the Heads by Bruce Doar, October 28, 1999, Archaeology Magazine)
- An unprecedented rash of looting is following in the wake of construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the middle reaches of China's Yangtze River. (Plundering the Three Gorges by Spencer P.M. Harrington, May 14, 1998, Archaeology Magazine)
- The Three Gorges Dam and the Looting of Archaeological Treasures by Elizabeth Childs-Johnson, International Rivers Network)
Return to the top The devastating effects of illegal excavations
- Much of China's ancient history is unknown and will remain forever lost because of illegal excavations, for example, the Chu, Liao, Jing and the Hongshan Cultures. (Illicit Excavation in Contemporary China by He Shuzhong, 2001)
- Robbing tombs and desecrating human remains violate the Chinese traditional respect for national cultural heritage. According to He Shuzhong, until about twenty years ago most Chinese people respected their heritage and they considered an archaeological site to be part of the 'national cultural heritage' or the 'soul of the ancestor'. During most of the 20th century there was a real sense of duty to report finds to the authorities. The lucrative gains from supplying the demand of the international illicit antiquities tradein the last 20 years have eroded this sense of national responsibility.
- The forgery industry prospers as a result of the high demand for Chinese antiquities. (Fakes Flood Market by Mark Rose, January 28, 2002, Archaeology Magazine)
Return to the top Huge U.S. market for Chinese antiquities
- At Christie's and Sotheby's "Asia Week", sales reached nearly $30 million, with Chinese art accounting for a little more than half of the total. More merchandise valued in the tens of millions of dollars was on offer uptown at the International Asian Art Fair and at galleries around town, where some of the field's most prominent specialists mount exhibits. (Chinese Art Leads Buoyant Sales at Lexington Avenue by Laura Beach)
- The security chief at a museum in Chengde, China was accused in June of stealing 158 artifacts in 12 years. One, the "Buddha of Infinite Life, fetched $295,000 at an auction. (Stealing Beauty, June 30, 2003/ Vol. 161 No. 25, Time Asia magazine)
- "Bronze Spirit Tree" sold for $2.5 million at the International Asian Art Fair in New York (Gansu Getaway by Lawrence R. Sullivan, Volume 51 Number 5, September/October 1998, Archaeology Magazine)
- Like an unstoppable tide, China is looming ever larger on the art scene. (Waves of Chinese Masterpieces Storm Market By Souren Melikian, International Herald Tribune)
- Currently in the US, there are more than 47 fairs, dealers and auction houses that exhibit Chinese antiquities for collectors. (source)
Return to the top China responds
- The State Administration of Cultural Heritage, on behalf of the Government of the People's Republic of China, is making a request to the Government of the United States for assistance under Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention to restrict importation of Chinese antiquities. Please read public summary for more details.
- Efforts being made to reclaim cultural relics (kaogu.cn, May 30, 2006)
- Saving the Cultural Relics of the Three Gorges (china.org.cn, February 16, 2005)
- "Protecting relics tops priorities" by Li Jing China Daily (January 14, 2005)
- Along the Silk Road, China Begins to Guard Its Heritage by Judith H. Dobrzynski (July 15, 2004, The New York Times)
- Rich Chinese bid to buy back 'stolen' treasures (June 4, 2004, CulPropProtNet/MusSecNetwork)
- China, Italy team up to protect cultural relics (February 10, 2004, People's Daily)
- Participants of the Seminar on Fighting Against the Illicit Traffic of Chinese Cultural Heritage agreed that "the Chinese Government has made great achievements in protecting the Chinese cultural heritage, and fighting against illicit traffic and smuggling of cultural heritage." (UNESCO, 2001)
- The Chinese government spent millions at auction buying back looted treasures (China Buys Back its Past by Spencer P.M. Harrington, May 11, 2000, Archaeology Magazine)
- Chinese authorities clamp down on antiquities theft (Chinese Thieves Executed, but Loot Remains at Large by Spencer P.M. Harrington February 2, 2000)
Return to the top Reasons to support China's request
- China's history and archaeology is key to our understanding of development of human society and civilization. Most of the information about ancient Chinese history has yet to be excavated. Objects uncovered in their original contexts and properly interpreted provide insight into the way our ancestors lived, what they ate, how they farmed, how they thought and what they did. Illegal excavations rob everyone of this knowledge.
- These bilateral, government-to-government agreements have proven to be effective in curbing looting of ancient sites by making it harder for smugglers to bring looted artifacts to market in the United States. From Cambodia to Italy to Peru, they have been credited by archaeologists, law enforcement, and government officials with helping to bring the problem of looting under control. An agreement with China could help greatly to curb the demolition of ancient sites to feed the antiquities trade. Read here for more information.
- Our ability to study and appreciate Chinese antiquities will be enhanced, because when artifacts are properly excavated, studied and displayed to the public, objects are no longer simply “pretty but dumb”, (Stealing History by Roger Atwood, St. Martin's Press, 2004). What import restrictions will diminish is the incentive to loot in order to satisfy the urge to possess yet another piece of Chinese porcelain in a rich man's home.
- There is no shortage of Chinese antiquities in the U.S. museums and institutions. Currently, there are 47 museums with collections
of Chinese antiquities. Between 2000 and 2004, there were 15 museum exhibitions focusing on China alone and in 2005, 30 more are planned.
- The burgeoning popularity of international loan exhibitions of properly excavated antiquities shows that this is a profitable alternative —both in the monetary as well as the educational sense—for museums to pursue, as the best way to bring the wonders of the past to a broad public audience instead of the continuing acquisition of objects with no provenance
- The US is a leader in the market for Chinese antiquities, SAFE believes that it should lead in the efforts to protect the cultural heritage of the people they belong to: all of us.
Return to the top
For more information about CPAC, please visit the U.S. State Department International Cultural Property Protection website.
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