Chinese officials have opened multiple investigations into allegations that staff at the state-run Nanjing Museum secretly removed cultural treasures from the collection and sold them on the open market—claims that have gone viral on social media and drawn comparisons to the recent Louvre heist.
According to the South China Morning Post, the scandal surfaced after a 16th-century Ming dynasty painting, Spring in Jiangnan by Qiu Ying, appeared in a Beijing auction catalog this year with an estimate of 88 million yuan ($12.5 million). The work was part of a 137-piece donation made in 1959 by the family of renowned collector Pang Laichen but was discovered missing during a 2023 court-ordered inventory check. The museum later said the painting, along with four other donated works, had been deemed forgeries in the 1960s, formally deaccessioned in 1997, and sold to a provincial relics store in 2001 for 6,800 yuan—though how it resurfaced at auction remains unclear. Pang’s descendants have publicly disputed the museum’s account and demanded documentation and the return of the disputed works.
The case escalated over the weekend when an 80-year-old retired museum employee, Guo Lidian, accused former museum director Xu Huping of orchestrating a large-scale theft and smuggling operation during his tenure. In a video statement, Guo alleged that Xu arranged for authentic works to be falsely certified as replicas, then funneled them through the same provincial relics store before reselling them domestically and overseas. Guo further claimed Xu had improperly opened crates containing more than 100,000 objects from the Palace Museum that were stored in Nanjing after World War II. Xu, 82, has denied involvement and said he was “not a painting authentication expert.”
The accusations have shaken public confidence in one of China’s most historically significant museums—an institution that safeguarded part of the Palace Museum’s collection during the World War II and is central to Beijing’s effort to position China as a cultural superpower.
On Tuesday, the National Cultural Heritage Administration announced the formation of a special working group to investigate the allegations. Jiangsu provincial authorities also launched a cross-departmental probe, and the Nanjing Museum said it was conducting its own internal review. Officials vowed to “severely punish” any violations and keep the public informed as the inquiry progresses.
The controversy comes as China strengthens its cultural relics oversight; a revised Cultural Relics Protection Law that took effect in March grants the country permanent rights to reclaim stolen or illegally exported heritage objects.
