CRI听力:Gold Culture Treasure Returned to China

China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage revealed on Tuesday that France returned the 32 solid gold antiquities earlier this year.

The ornaments include four solid gold bird's heads.

They had been stolen by tomb robbers in a small county of China's Gansu province and smuggled abroad.

Bai Jian, deputy director of the cultural relics bureau in Gansu, says a large number of stolen cultural relics were sent abroad in the 1990s.

"In the early 1990s, tomb robbing was rampant near burial sites dating back to the Qin Dynasty in Li county of Gansu province. The national cultural relics bureau and the local government jointly launched a campaign to crack down on tomb robbing. Some of the treasure was reclaimed by authorities during the campaign. Yet a large amount of it is still missing that has great value in archaeological studies."

Chinese authorities have spent years tracking the lost treasure and found they were purchased by two private collectors in France and later donated to a national museum.
Song Xinchao, deputy head of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, says those ornaments were returned to China after complex negotiations via diplomatic channels.

"French law forbids national museums giving away their collections because it stipulates that all state-owned assets are non-transferable. The French government could not break the law. However, it also did not want to breach relevant international conventions, so it decided to return the gifts to the donors."

The treasure was returned in the name of its donator after the collector consented to withdraw the donation to the museum.

Gu Yucai, deputy head of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, emphasizes that in addition to efforts to crack down cultural relic smuggling China needs to make more efforts to take those stolen artifacts back home.

"We should crack down on the excavation, robbing and smuggling operations of cultural relics from the source. We also need to tighten the entry and exit administration, and play a more active role in relevant activities led by international organizations and conventions, to prevent the losses or relics. Meanwhile, we should search for looted relics through various ways, including diplomatic and judicial approach."

Those returned artifacts are set to go on show to the public at an exhibition in Gansu province from which they were taken.

For CRI, I am Huang Shan.