American Chinese Collector's Association Chairman Zhou Dezhao
recently brought back to China a batch of Chinese cultural relics
lost abroad, including the Qing Dynasty (1616-1911) ivory sculpture
of Buddhism treasure named "Three Saints of the West" collected by
him.
In the year 2002, the Chinese government formally set up a
special fund to recover national key cultural relics and allocates
50 million?yuan (US$6.25 million) annually to reclaim precious
cultural relics that are lost overseas. To date, actual spending
added up to about 200 million RMB, recovering 204 pieces of
precious cultural relics from abroad.
According to statistics from the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization, among the collections of
200-odd museums in 47 foreign countries, 1.67 million pieces of
cultural relics are from China. The number of Chinese cultural
relics preserved by individual foreign collectors might be several
folds, even a dozen times more.
(Chinanews.cn June 7, 2006)
