A piece of brocade in a dragon design made for a Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) emperor.	The memorial tablet to Emperor Qianlong (reigned 1735-1795) of the Qing Dynasty that originally stood in the Forbidden City in Beijing before being looted and taken overseas.	The Yan Mountain inscription by master calligrapher Mi Fu of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127).

Among the collections of more than 200 museums in 47 countries, 1.67 million cultural relic exhibits are from China, according to UNESCO statistics, yet they represent only a tenth of the Chinese relics held in private domestic and overseas collections.

The Special Exhibition for Cultural Heritages Day held in China's National Museum from June 5 to July 5, 2006 celebrated the return to China of national treasures that have been held in various European museums for one hundred years or more. They include the Yan Mountain Inscription by the master calligrapher Mi Fu of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), the Chunhuage Tie, the earliest collection of model letters from the Imperial Archive of the Chunhua Reign (976-997) of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the head of a stone-carved Buddha from the Longmen Grottoes in Henan Province.

The cornerstone exhibition of this event was the Collection of Cultural Relics Since 1949, which comprised treasures donated by Chinese non-governmental organizations and overseas collectors.

Government and NGO Relic Recovery

Rapid development of the Chinese economy in recent years has revived the domestic antique market, and led to the recovery of many lost Chinese cultural relics. The Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics promulgated in October 2002 stipulating that relics may be obtained by private purchase and auction did much to stimulate their homeward flow. The Institute of Relic Authentication, founded in 2003, is a new department of the Chinese Cultural Relics Information Center sponsored by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH). Besides helping domestic museums and individuals to authenticate the antiquities in their possession, the institute is also responsible for retrieving cultural relics from overseas by means of a specialized database.

The Institute's Collecting National Key Cultural Relics project was established in 2002 under the sponsorship of SACH and the Chinese Ministry of Finance, with the specific aim of recovering precious relics from abroad. The project is open to the public, and any clue about lost relics is welcome, says Xie Xiaoquan, vice director of the Institute of Relic Authentication.

Since the project's establishment, the Chinese government has made an annual contribution to it of RMB 50 million (US$ 6.25 million). It has so far recovered 60,000 shadow play puppets and 204 key relics. The latter include the Yan Mountain Inscription by Mi Fu, outstanding calligrapher of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) in 2002 and the bronze engraved Zilong Ding, the largest Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 BC) bronze artifact, in April 2006.

More Chinese cultural relics, held by both overseas and domestic collectors, will be retrieved during 2006, says You Qingqiao, director of Chinese Cultural Relics Information Center adding, "The Chinese government's determination and confidence provides the motivation and impetus necessary to reclaim lost relics. It has intensified its efforts to find lost treasures. The Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and SACH have established contact with groups of overseas collectors, auction firms and museums as well as Chinese Embassies. An online search system for lost relics has also been set up."

The Chinese government is particularly intent on retrieving the cultural relics held within China, before they can be sold to and spirited away by foreign collectors. With the help of folk artisans, the Collecting National Key Cultural Relics Fund has recovered 60,000 shadow play puppets from 20-odd provinces, confirms Zhang Xiwu, director of the Relic Authentication Office. He explains: "Shadow play puppets are one of the main facets of traditional Chinese folk art, and as such are in high demand by foreign collectors. That's why we must act promptly to recover those precious relics while they are still on home soil." The 60,000 puppets recovered are to be exhibited in a shadow play museum planned for Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, along with thousands of others gathered from around the Province.

There are three ways of retrieving lost relics : by voluntary donation, reclaiming through judicial procedures, and purchase. As prices of relics are often millions of RMB per item, the annual RMB 50 million allocated to their recovery by the Chinese government is sufficient to purchase just a few each year, says Xie Xiaoquan. He insists that increasing funds towards recovery of precious relics and maintaining the government's dominance in this field is vital.

NGO Involvement

The involvement of non-governmental organizations, however, to some extent compensates for funding shortfalls. In July 2003, the non-governmental Special Fund for Rescuing Lost Cultural Relics from Overseas, founded in 2002, launched its National Treasure Project. The RMB 6 million (US$ 750,000) donated by well-known Macao entrepreneur He Hongshen enabled the fund to recover a bronze hog's head that has been abroad for over 140 years. It was the first national treasure to have been recovered by an NGO.

In recent years, the world's top auction houses have become familiar with Chinese buyers and are obviously impressed with their bold buying tactics, as demonstrated by the invitations to banquets at Christie's and Sotheby's to 20 or more businessmen from Cixi in southeast China's Zhejiang Province in October 2004.

In 2004, 13 percent of all artworks of Chinese origin were sold to Chinese buyers, according to Christies,and this percentage increased to 25 percent in March 2004 by virtue of an auction dealing exclusively in Chinese artworks. The German auction firm Nagel's records over the past few years show 40 percent of its buyers of Chinese artworks to have come from Europe, 10 percent from the US, and the remainder from China. The volume of transactions with Chinese buyers accounts for 25 to 30 percent of Nagel's business.

Most of these private buyers, dubbed the Zhejiang Corps, are successful businessmen from Cixi, Taizhou and Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province.

At the Sotheby's 2004 Autumn Auction, Xu Qiming, president of the Xulong Food Group in Zhejiang Province, bought a pink-peach plate produced during the reign of Qing Emperor Yongzheng for HK$ 4.5 million, and a Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) jar decorated with blue dragons for HK$ 4 million. In total, Xu spent more than RMB 30 million (US $3,75 million) on the purchase of Chinese cultural relics at London and New York auctions. At the 2004 Zhongmaoshengjia Spring Auction in Beijing, the Painting of Birds and Blossoms by Chen Hongshou, who lived during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, was sold for RMB 28 million (US $3.5 million) to the Zhongkai Group of Zhejiang Province.

A dozen or so Zhejiang private businesses actively collect and purchase ancient artworks, their total combined investment amounting to hundreds of million RMB. Almost half of this capital comes from companies in Cixi such as the Jinlun Group, whose business includes textiles, thermal power generating and real estate. The Jinlun Group has also invested four to five hundred million RMB in promoting the Jinlun Art Gallery, which houses more than one thousand exhibits of ancient porcelain, bronze, painting and calligraphy, valued at RMB 5 to 6 billion (US $620 to 750 million). Private businessmen play a major role in retrieving lost relics, as nearly 10 percent of the 20,000 items that are homeward bound have been recovered by them, according to the Special Fund for Rescuing Lost Cultural Relics from Overseas under the China Social-Cultural Development Foundation.

In early January 2006, the Zhejiang Museum held its Private Treasures: Civil Collection in Zhejiang exhibition of more than 280 relics. "Most of the exhibits were recovered from overseas by individuals, and more than 50 percent were part of the collections of private businesses. This exhibition is just the tip of the iceberg, as there can be no doubt that individual collections in Zhejiang surpass, both in quantity and quality, those of the museum," says Zhao Youqiang, director of the Social Education Department of the Zhejiang Museum.

Beijing Curio City recently opened a hall specializing in relics recovered from overseas. This supervised market has attracted ten cultural relics companies from Beijing, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and is regarded as a new channel for accelerating the flow of returned relics. Beijing Curio City is about to step into the mainstream of the international collectors' market through its establishment of a collector's "fraternity" whose members will pool funds and exchange market information.

Big Cultural Relic Business

In May 2006, participants in the first Overseas Chinese Treasure Hunt, organized by the Special Fund for Rescuing Lost Cultural Relics from Overseas, arrived in Japan. After a week of hunting in Tokyo and Yokohama, 20 private and professional antique dealers had bought back more than 20 Chinese relics.

Upon their return to Beijing these collectors were mobbed by members of the media, many of whom interpreted their actions as being motivated by self-interest rather than patriotism.

Certain experts say that the revival of the domestic collectors' market has pushed prices at local auctions of Chinese cultural relics to an all time high, which is a main reason why so many lost relics are being sought. As at April 2005, 50 percent of the stock held at a dozen Chinese auction firms consisted of relics recovered from abroad, and accounted for 60 percent of their transaction volume. But a frequent occurrence at Chinese auctions is that of returned relics being purchased by foreign collectors, as in the case of the Painting of Precious Fowls by Emperor Hui of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). The painting sold at auction in China in 2002 for a record RMB 25.3 million (US$ 3.225 million) to a US art museum.

Chinese relics collectors, whether individuals or enterprises, should do more research, suggests Zhang Xiwu, director of the Relic Authentication Office, in order to determine the history and source of the relics they intend to purchase. Paying exorbitant prices should be avoided in favor of spending the time to find other, more economic ways of recovering treasures from abroad.