Christies Auctions Relics Over PRC Government’s Objections (XIIA)

On April 30, 2000, Christie’s auctioned two relics despite protests from the People’s Republic of China that the relics had been looted from an imperial palace 140 years ago. The controversy gives rise to the lack of adequate mechanisms to resolve disputes about allegedly stolen cultural property. The pieces in question, bronze sculptures of an ox head and a monkey head, each sold for slightly over $1 million. According to Christie’s, the same person, who it declined to identify, bought both pieces. Local television reports said the buyer was a collector from mainland China. On April 28, 2000, China’s Cultural Relics Bureau stated that the relics were stolen from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing when British and French troops ransacked it in 1860. The Bureau said selling the relics, especially in Hong Kong, would be “insulting and deeply painful to the Chinese people”…[more]