Yue Zhang (Southeast University (China); University of Wisconsin Law School) has posted China's Looted Cultural Property: Historical Injustice and Current Dilemma on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
On August 27, 2023, the Global Times, one of the most reputable Chinese newspapers, made a formal request to the British Museum to return all of the cultural artifacts that had been looted from China but have currently been stored in the Museum. Disputes over historically looted cultural property are not a new topic. Yet China’s cases may not draw sufficient attention on the international stage. China is indeed a typical victim of a great deal of looting during a miserable century starting with the Opium War in 1840 until the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. It is estimated that over ten million Chinese cultural artifacts were looted during this period. How did these art lootings occur in history? Where are the looted artifacts located right now? How do the Chinese government and population respond to the historical injustice? Could the Chinese government or other possible legitimate title-holders be entitled to make claims for the ownership or possession of the looted art? If so, could the claim be a legal claim of restitution or a mere moral claim of return? How do China’s looted cases correspond with art plunders that occurred in other parts of the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Would a third approach appear to break the dilemma between restitution/return and retention? The ASIL Interested Group-Cultural Heritage and the Arts organizes this session to invite several Chinese scholars specializing in the intersection of cultural heritage and international law to discuss the abovementioned issues. The first speaker, Zhengxin Huo, provides a general illustration of the painful history of how China suffered the looting of cultural heritage in various means during 1840–1949, the government actions to regain lost treasures, and obstacles China has encountered, with a particular attention to legal arguments for the return of Chinese relics looted by Japan during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression. The second speaker, Yue Zhang, presents a case study of the looting of China’s Old Summer Palace by British and French armies at the end of Second Opium War, which has been deemed as a typical national shame among all the lootings occurred during 1840–1949. She discusses whether China is entitled to reclaim those cultural artifacts removed as spoils of war today by three questions: (1) Was there a rule that prohibited such art plunder in 1860s?; (2) Would that rule be applied to the Second Opium War considering the so-called standard of civilized nations?; (3) Would the passage of over one and a half centuries impair the claims for restitution today? The third speaker, Jie (Jeanne) Huang, discusses the competing claims on underwater cultural heritage, with a particular focus on the areas of the South China Sea and along the Maritime Silk Road. This topic usually draws less attention compared with art plunder due to war or colonization, but remains significant for the large number of artifacts discovered underwater. Huang explores this issue from four aspects: (1) the scope of underwater cultural heritage under Chinese law; (2) their whereabouts and features; (3) China’s reactions; and (4) the validity of China’s claims to these artifacts. The final speaker, Xuemei Yang, provides a case study on the digital sharing of the Dunhuang cultural relics overseas. The Dunhuang cultural relics represents a proud of Chinese ancient civilization witnessing the prosperity of China’s ancient silk road. Yang first illustrates the discover of the “Library Cave” in Mogao Grottoes in 1900 and the disaster for the looting of those cultural relics by foreign scientific expedition teams afterward. She then presents various models wherein the Dunhuang Academy seeks cooperation with the British Museum and other collectors for establishing the databases of Dunhuang cultural relics and shares the progress they have achieved. Notedly, digital repatriation does not suggest in any means that China gives up its efforts for the material return of cultural heritage. Rather, Yang provides a case study to seek conversations and cooperation with museums and other institutions collecting those art plunders overseas as a new approach to ease the tensions between restitution/return and retention.