After being abroad for decades, 68 Chinese cultural relics that had been taken to the United Kingdom recently were returned to their homeland thanks to joint efforts of the two countries, the National Cultural Heritage Administration said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Some of the relics span millennia, dating from the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and they encompass a variety of items, mainly ceramics. They are from a variety of provinces, including Jiangxi, Anhui, Fujian, Henan, Shaanxi, Hebei and Guizhou.
Their return brings an end to a quarter-century of efforts for repatriation, said Guan Qiang, deputy director of the administration.
In February 1995, the Metropolitan Police Service in London informed the Chinese embassy in the UK that an investigation into the sale of stolen property involved a group of cultural relics that were believed to be from China. That was confirmed by the administration in Beijing, which said that they were smuggled out of China.
British police seized all the items in an operation that March. Soon, the State Council, China's Cabinet, set up a special cross-departmental working group to bring them home.
In 1998, over 3,000 relics were returned to China after cooperation by law enforcement units, a lawsuit and negotiations. It was the largest single repatriation of lost cultural relics in the history of New China.
However, a local buyer of dozens of remaining relics refused to take part in negotiations, and the civil dispute dragged on after hitting a deadlock. The 68 relics remained impounded by British police.
"But we never stopped working on the case and stayed in close contact with the embassy and the British side to follow up on their latest information," Guan said.
A break finally appeared. In January, the Metropolitan Police informed the Chinese embassy that the deadline for prosecution in the case had passed, but the whereabouts of the buyer were unknown. The police showed a willingness to return the items to China after seeking legal advice.
The process of getting the artifacts home immediately was restarted. In spite of delays created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Yu Peng, a minister counsellor from the embassy, led a team to check the inventory in July. A quarter century earlier, Yu had been the person responsible for first contacting the British police in the case.
The Metropolitan Police Service handed the artifacts to the Chinese embassy in October. Liu Xiaoming, Chinese ambassador to the UK, also held an online handover ceremony just before the relics' departure. Joining the embassy in presenting the event were officials of the British Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The relics were transported in tailor-made cases and landed intact in Beijing on Oct 20, but the process had remained confidential until Wednesday.
"The consistent action showed our determination to solve crimes and bring back lost or stolen cultural relics from overseas," Guan said.
An expert panel was organized to examine and appraise the relics as soon as they arrived in Beijing, according to Deng Chao, director of the cultural relic repatriation office of the National Cultural Heritage Administration.
"Generally, they are very well preserved and in good shape," Deng said. "Many of them are of very great value for historical and scientific studies."
He said 13 artifacts have been labeled as national precious cultural relics of the second-highest grade, and 30 are categorized as being of the third-highest grade.
Many of the recovered relics were Song Dynasty (960-1279) porcelains from different kilns, reflecting a booming economy at the time and showing how the production techniques used at the time had spread.
Two intact ceramic vases, dating from the late Yuan (1271-1368) and early Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, are thought to be from the same tomb. A rare stone statuette of a horse was probably tied to a local chieftain in Guizhou province during the Yuan or Ming Dynasty, based on comparisons with other archaeological discoveries.
A group of Han Dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD) figurines portraying dancers is also a key reference for the study of pottery-making technology of the time.
Guan added that the repatriation also sets a good example as this year marks the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, commonly known as UNESCO Convention 1970. China joined the convention in 1989.
Guan said one reason the repatriation of the 68 relics was difficult back in the 1990s is the absence of a shared legal basis for the process before the UK joined the convention in 2002.
"Repatriation of lost relics not only involves complex legal issues," he said. "It is also connected with people's collective emotions and international relations. As an issue of shared difficulty for the world, the solution requires consistent efforts over generations."
But he added that international law has undergone a historic change in the past 20 years and returning lost relics to their origin is becoming a worldwide consensus.
"So this achievement jointly reached by China and the UK has global significance in providing support for similar cases," he said.