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For the love of art, help
China
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - An official Chinese government
campaign to reverse the outflow of China's
cultural and artistic heritage has set off an
impassioned debate about the pros and cons of free
trade in art. It also questions the dubious record
of the Communist Party leadership in protecting
its cultural patrimony.
Chinese officials
have asked the United States government to share
responsibility for the depletion of Chinese
artifacts in the country by imposing restrictions
on the import to the US of all cultural property
over 95 years old. They argue that huge demand in
the US for China's rich cultural heritage is the
root cause for increased looting and smuggling of
artifacts and works of art.
China is not
the first country to ask the US to impose import
restrictions on antiquities. The controversy
surrounding China's request stems from the fact
that the list of items presented to US customs
authorities as imports to be prohibited is far
more sweeping than current restrictions on export
of cultural items from the country.
Questions are also being raised as to
whether China has done enough to halt the loss of
artifacts at home before seeking help from abroad.
Existing Chinese regulations on exports of
cultural relics stipulate that only items dating
from before 1795 (which marks the end of Qing
emperor Qian Long's reign), are prohibited from
export.
But the Chinese request for US
import restrictions though, is all encompassing,
covering works of art in virtually every media,
from the Paleolithic era to the end of the empire
in 1911.
The request is currently being
considered by the US, which is conducting its own
investigation into China's art scene, including
the country's auction houses, antiquities markets
and customs controls.
The US is bound by
an art-importation law, the Convention on Cultural
Policy Implementation Act (CPIA), which was passed
by Congress in 1983, after a decade of debate, to
comply with a 1970 UNESCO (United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)
convention. The law is aimed at resolving crisis
situations in which the cultural patrimony of a
nation signatory to the UN agreement is deemed in
jeopardy.
Few dispute the need to stem the
flow of plundered artifacts from China.
Last year, China had 36 large-scale
robberies of museums, tombs and temples resulting
in the loss of 223 antiquities, according to the
State Cultural Relics Bureau. The rate of
successful thefts has increased by 80% compared to
the year before, the bureau estimates.
But
art dealers and collectors from both sides of the
Pacific agree that granting China its request
would be tantamount to shutting down the US market
in Chinese antiquities.
Restrictions on
imports of Chinese artifacts will have
far-reaching implications for the cultural lives
of US citizens and all foreigners, they say,
because it would deprive them of valuable
opportunities to appreciate and study China's
astonishingly rich culture.
"That would be
a throwback to McCarthy-era restrictions of the
1960s, when all Chinese art imported to the US
required proof that it was not owned by a
communist," James Lally, a renowned US Asian art
dealer, was quoted as saying in Orientations
magazine - a publication for art collectors.
The 1950s and 1960s were an ugly time for
thousands of US citizens of Chinese origin,
clustered in Chinatowns across the country, who
became the target of anti-communist fervor ignited
by Senator Joseph McCarthy and aimed at the Soviet
Union and China.
US museum curators have
described China's request as a shotgun solution
that would do little to stop or decrease looting
and smuggling of artifacts. But China's art
dealers have been equally vocal in opposing the
request as flawed.
''There is too much
emphasis on control; on export restrictions,''
said Liu Shangyong, an auction official with
Rongbao Auction company, commenting on China's
policies on cultural relics. ''To eliminate
looting and smuggling, you have to promote
openness and many channels for antiquities
exchange rather than simply blocking them.?
''It is more or less a measure of
desperation, an admission that we cannot tackle
the problem at its source,'' said Zhang Deqin, a
former official with the State Cultural Relics
Bureau. ''Since we cannot stop people from looting
relics inside the country, we have to ask foreign
countries to supervise their imports.''
Many argue that the Chinese government's
commitment to investing in huge infrastructure
works is a far more substantial source of
artifacts loss than looting. The most obvious
example of artifacts lost to construction and
development is the Three Gorges dam. The world's
largest reservoir, going up on the Yangtze River,
has caused the inundation of numerous historic
towns and ancient tombs. Many artifacts from the
area were only salvaged thanks to private
collectors.
Government engagement in
the art trade is being scrutinized, not the
least because of China's unsavory past record
of preserving its cultural patrimony. Antiquities
were destroyed during the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution as symbols of pernicious old
thinking and old customs.
Until 10 years
ago, all buying and selling of Chinese antiquities
abroad were monopolized by the state. That meant
that the Ministry of Foreign Trade exported works
of art to earn foreign currency that was later
spent on buying steel and cement to finance
China's industrialization.
The exodus of
art works had started with the collapse of the
Qing empire in 1911 and in the modernization drive
that followed when valuable antiquities were sold
off at rock bottom prices. With the ascendance of
the Communist Party to power, what was left of
China's vast cultural heritage was either
destroyed, or confiscated and exported.
When the frenzied destruction of the
Cultural Revolution (1956 to 1966) was over, the
state invited foreign dealers to visit the vast
warehouses stacked full of confiscated works of
art and buy in bulk. By some accounts, in the
1980s China was exporting a million snuff bottles
a year.
Trying to reverse this wholesale
pillaging of the country's cultural heritage,
China announced in April a large-scale program
aimed at reclaiming national treasures from
abroad.
A quasi non-governmental
organization, the China Cultural Relics Recovery
Program, has began work on recovery of items that
were stolen, looted and smuggled abroad between
1840 and 1945, before the founding of communist
China.
This task force claims that Chinese
cultural relics held by private individuals abroad
exceed the numbers of antiquities stashed away in
foreign museums by 10 times. UNESCO figures
suggest that 1.67 million Chinese antiquities are
owned by more than 200 museums in 47 countries.
The official Xinhua news agency quoted one
senior cultural heritage preservation expert, Xie
Chensheng, as saying: "The spiritual wealth can be
shared by the whole world, but not the ownership -
just like property rights on software. Ownership
of the scattered cultural treasures should lie
with the Chinese people."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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