On the same day that US president Joe Biden called for a tripling of tariffs on imports of some Chinese steel and aluminium, American and Chinese officials gathered for a ceremony at China’s consulate in New York City marking the repatriation of 38 antiquities. Attendees underscored the importance of continued coordination between the two countries on cultural heritage matters, even as economic, political and military tensions remain very high.
“We recognise two of the most important aspects to cultural heritage—one is a reminder that we have far more in common than you might otherwise believe from all the headlines you read,” Matthew Bogdanos, the chief of the antiquities trafficking unit at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, said during the 17 April ceremony, according to Xinhua. “And the second is that we have far more in common when we roll up our sleeves and get to work returning these antiquities where they belong because that’s our only goal.”
The objects, dating from the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), include wooden sculptures, ivory carvings, fragments of murals and more. Most of them are Tibetan Buddhist artefacts. They were seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in March, according to the South China Morning Post, and will be transported back to China at a later date.
The ceremony was also attended by Li Qun, China’s deputy minister of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA); China’s consul general in New York Huang Ping; and Wen Dayan, the director general of the international cooperation department at the NCHA.
A selection of some of the artefacts seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and returned to Chinese authorities during a 17 April ceremony at China’s consulate in New York, including four mural fragments Courtesy Chinese Consulate General in New York
“China has always been committed to preventing and combating the illegal trafficking of cultural property through expanding government cooperation,” Wen told Xinhua after the ceremony. “China sincerely thanks the United States for its extensive efforts in promoting cultural relic returns, and we highly appreciate the professionalism demonstrated by our American counterparts in this endeavour.”
China and the US first signed a memorandum of understanding to prevent the trafficking of Chinese artefacts into the US in January 2009. It was extended for a third time during a ceremony this past January, and this marks the first repatriation since then. In May of last year, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office returned two 7th-century stone carvings that had belonged to the collector Shelby White (and been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art) to China.
Bogdanos added, of the ceremony: “It’s a celebration of what we have done, but it’s also a reminder of how much we still have to do, because for every antiquity you see here that’s being returned, there’s another dozen that are still out there waiting for us to find, to seize and to return to the country of origin.”
