(TibetanReview.net, Apr19’24) —The United States has on Apr 17 delivered 38 cultural relics to China as part of a repatriation deal to help Beijing retrieve artifacts that have been lost throughout the centuries. However, what is disconcerting about this “repatriation” is that “the prized haul primarily comprises Tibetan Buddhist objects spanning from the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) to the Qing Dynasty (1644 -1911)” as reported by China’s official news.cgtn.com Apr 19.
The repatriation is part of a 2009 MOU between China and the US relating to the illegal importation of Chinese cultural property, so it is obviously based on the US recognition of Tibet being part of China which illegally annexed the Himalayan country in 1951.
The repatriation of the relics was made to Chinese officials on Apr 17 at a handover ceremony held at the Chinese consulate general in New York City.
During China’s invasion of Tibet from late 1949 and especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Chinese officials ransacked monasteries and temples, as well as the Potala Palace in Capital Lhasa, and plundered them of their countless and priceless artifacts which were then said to have been smuggled to antique markets in Hong Kong and elsewhere.
Since signing the MOU in 2009, 504 lost artefacts have been successfully returned to China from the US in 15 batches, the scmp.com Apr 19 cited Li Qun, director general of the Chinese National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA), as saying said during the ceremony.
These unwavering efforts, coupled with intensified global cooperation, have yielded major gains, with over 150,000 artifacts retrieved through more than 300 repatriation missions since 1949, said the news.cgtn.com report.
The report cited the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics as saying that over 10 million Chinese artifacts had been displaced overseas since the Opium War in 1840, a consequence of warfare and illicit trade. It did not refer to the Cultural Revolution period plunders of artifacts in Tibet by communist Chinese officials.
The question is, will the US continue to “repatriate” to China lost or stolen Tibetan artifacts should its Congress pass the ongoing “Resolve Tibet Act” which recognized Tibet as an occupied country and whose legal status remains to be resolved under international law?