It is stepping up pressure to stop Paris auction of two Qing sculptures
By Sim Chi Yin 23 February 2009
BEIJING: A bullish China is using new weapons to try to bring two Qing dynasty animal sculptures home, almost 150 years after they were looted from Beijing’s imperial Summer Palace in a humiliating chapter in Chinese history.
The bronze rabbit and rat heads are expected to fetch US$10 million to US$13 million (S$15.3 million to S$19.9 million) each at an auction in Paris this week.
China, which previously worked with private firms or businessmen to buy such relics, is stepping up diplomatic and legal pressure to stop the sale.
Foreign ministry spokesman Jiang Yu warned at a recent press briefing that the bronzes should be removed from the auction as they had been ‘looted’ by invading armies. Auctioning them ‘offends the Chinese people’, she said, raising fears that this latest row would deepen tensions between China and France over Tibet.
Taking things into their own hands, 90 Chinese lawyers have banded together to use legal levers to stop the auction.
Their leader, Mr. Liu Yang, told The Straits Times in a telephone interview on Friday that they had filed an application with a French court, in the name of a like-minded French citizen, to halt the sale. The hearing is set for today, just hours before the auction starts.
Mr. Liu said they had received no response to a legal letter sent two weeks ago to the owner of the bronzes, Mr. Pierre Berge - a business partner of the late couturier Yves Saint Laurent. The bronzes are part of their art collection, which will go under the hammer at a glitzy 700-lot auction.
The animal heads once adorned a fountain at Yuanmingyuan, which was wrecked by foreign troops in 1860. The palace has been partially restored, but the lingering sense of injustice from that episode, which showed China at its weakest and foretold the end of its last dynasty, explains the strong reaction to the auction.
As Mr. Liu put it: ‘These are not ordinary artefacts. To us, the sacking of Yuanmingyuan is a wound that hasn’t healed. It’s very painful when someone rubs salt into the wound.’
Mr. Niu Xianfeng, the deputy director of the government-linked Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Programme, which also sent letters of protest to Mr. Berge late last year, said: ‘If one sells these items, it’s obliterating history.’
Dr Lars Laamann, a Qing historian at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, explained: ‘Generations of Chinese have been taught that the attack on Yuanmingyuan was a key, iconic event in the downfall of the Qing and in the ‘century of humiliation’ that China suffered at the hands of foreign imperialists.’
Newly affluent and more assertive, the Chinese are now keen to bring home some of the 10 million or so antiquities ‘lost’ overseas - a generation after their forefathers smashed much of the ‘bourgeois’ art and culture reviled during the Cultural Revolution.
Retired Qing historian Wang Daocheng said: ‘The problem is, the price is getting higher and higher. Auction houses are deliberately taking advantage of the Chinese people’s love for their relics.
‘If we go and buy the sculptures again, it will encourage them. That’s why, this time, the government has told local museums not to use money to bring back the relics.’
The signs are that China will now lean more on diplomacy.
Beijing last month inked an agreement with the United States to ban the import of a wide range of Chinese antiquities into the US - deterring illegal trade in artefacts.
But in the increasingly politicised tussle over the two bronzes, Mr. Berge told the press over the weekend that he had the right paperwork and that the auction would go ahead - unless Beijing agreed to improve its human rights record and ‘give the Tibetans back their freedom’.
Professor Wang Yunxia, an expert in cultural relics law at Beijing’s Renmin University, felt it was unlikely legal action would work, as none of at least three international conventions protecting looted relics - the earliest dating back to 1954 - can be invoked retroactively to cover most of China’s artefacts.
Lawyer Mr. Liu remains hopeful his efforts will pay off somehow. He said: ‘I think, given the strong opposition the Chinese have expressed, anyone who wants to buy the heads would now think twice. As long as we prevent them from being sold at this auction, we would have succeeded, in a way.’
1 comment:
China flexes diplomatic muscle to reclaim relics
It is stepping up pressure to stop Paris auction of two Qing sculptures
By Sim Chi Yin
23 February 2009
BEIJING: A bullish China is using new weapons to try to bring two Qing dynasty animal sculptures home, almost 150 years after they were looted from Beijing’s imperial Summer Palace in a humiliating chapter in Chinese history.
The bronze rabbit and rat heads are expected to fetch US$10 million to US$13 million (S$15.3 million to S$19.9 million) each at an auction in Paris this week.
China, which previously worked with private firms or businessmen to buy such relics, is stepping up diplomatic and legal pressure to stop the sale.
Foreign ministry spokesman Jiang Yu warned at a recent press briefing that the bronzes should be removed from the auction as they had been ‘looted’ by invading armies. Auctioning them ‘offends the Chinese people’, she said, raising fears that this latest row would deepen tensions between China and France over Tibet.
Taking things into their own hands, 90 Chinese lawyers have banded together to use legal levers to stop the auction.
Their leader, Mr. Liu Yang, told The Straits Times in a telephone interview on Friday that they had filed an application with a French court, in the name of a like-minded French citizen, to halt the sale. The hearing is set for today, just hours before the auction starts.
Mr. Liu said they had received no response to a legal letter sent two weeks ago to the owner of the bronzes, Mr. Pierre Berge - a business partner of the late couturier Yves Saint Laurent. The bronzes are part of their art collection, which will go under the hammer at a glitzy 700-lot auction.
The animal heads once adorned a fountain at Yuanmingyuan, which was wrecked by foreign troops in 1860. The palace has been partially restored, but the lingering sense of injustice from that episode, which showed China at its weakest and foretold the end of its last dynasty, explains the strong reaction to the auction.
As Mr. Liu put it: ‘These are not ordinary artefacts. To us, the sacking of Yuanmingyuan is a wound that hasn’t healed. It’s very painful when someone rubs salt into the wound.’
Mr. Niu Xianfeng, the deputy director of the government-linked Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Programme, which also sent letters of protest to Mr. Berge late last year, said: ‘If one sells these items, it’s obliterating history.’
Dr Lars Laamann, a Qing historian at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, explained: ‘Generations of Chinese have been taught that the attack on Yuanmingyuan was a key, iconic event in the downfall of the Qing and in the ‘century of humiliation’ that China suffered at the hands of foreign imperialists.’
Newly affluent and more assertive, the Chinese are now keen to bring home some of the 10 million or so antiquities ‘lost’ overseas - a generation after their forefathers smashed much of the ‘bourgeois’ art and culture reviled during the Cultural Revolution.
Retired Qing historian Wang Daocheng said: ‘The problem is, the price is getting higher and higher. Auction houses are deliberately taking advantage of the Chinese people’s love for their relics.
‘If we go and buy the sculptures again, it will encourage them. That’s why, this time, the government has told local museums not to use money to bring back the relics.’
The signs are that China will now lean more on diplomacy.
Beijing last month inked an agreement with the United States to ban the import of a wide range of Chinese antiquities into the US - deterring illegal trade in artefacts.
But in the increasingly politicised tussle over the two bronzes, Mr. Berge told the press over the weekend that he had the right paperwork and that the auction would go ahead - unless Beijing agreed to improve its human rights record and ‘give the Tibetans back their freedom’.
Professor Wang Yunxia, an expert in cultural relics law at Beijing’s Renmin University, felt it was unlikely legal action would work, as none of at least three international conventions protecting looted relics - the earliest dating back to 1954 - can be invoked retroactively to cover most of China’s artefacts.
Lawyer Mr. Liu remains hopeful his efforts will pay off somehow. He said: ‘I think, given the strong opposition the Chinese have expressed, anyone who wants to buy the heads would now think twice. As long as we prevent them from being sold at this auction, we would have succeeded, in a way.’
Post a Comment