A leading Chinese state-run newspaper has asked the British Museum to return all Chinese cultural relics “acquired through improper channels to China free of charge” on the eve of a visit by the UK foreign secretary.
The statement came in Monday’s edition of the Global Times just two days before UK foreign secretary James Cleverly’s scheduled arrival in Beijing on Wednesday. This is the first visit by a British foreign secretary to China in five years.
The Global Times editorial called on the British Museum to return all Chinese cultural relics “acquired through improper channels to China free of charge”. It referred to Britain’s refusal “over the years” to return artifacts to other countries and accused the museum of ”adopting a resistant, protracted, and perfunctory attitude”.
The British Museum houses the biggest collection of Chinese relics anywhere in the West – at least 23,000 – ranging from paintings that date back to the Tang dynasty (618-907) to bronze vessels dating to the dawn of China’s civilisation.
“It’s difficult to trace how exactly China lost them to the British Museum, but most Chinese collections were certainly looted or stolen by Britain when it created and later took advantage of China’s crisis, or even directly robbed China,” the newspaper said.
A British law enacted in 1963 prohibits the museum from repatriating objects. Questioning this law, the editorial said it was “equivalent to the UK installing a threshold on its own door and then telling the owner of the relics that it cannot return the artifacts because it cannot get out of the door”.
“In our view, the questionable origins of the millions of artifacts in the British Museum raise further concerns about what constitutes the ‘largest’ theft,” it added.
