Cultural Property

The dramatic story of the two looted bronze heads provides a most thought-provoking episode on the nature, purpose and process of international law. A group of Chinese lawyers engineered a lawsuit at the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris in an attempt to prevent Christie’s from selling two bronze sculptures that were taken from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860 by the pillaging French and British troops. When the French court dismissed the lawsuit on the ground that the plaintiff, the Association for the Protection of Chinese Art in Europe (APACE). was not entitled to file the lawsuit as it had no direct links with the artifacts, China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) explicitly demanded cancellation of the auction, because "there is a common understanding in the international community that looted cultural objects should be returned to their countries" and "[t]his is a basic cultural right of people in the origin countries". After Christie's went ahead with the auction, SACH declared that the auction "will have a serious impact on Christie's development in China" and imposed limits on what the auction house could bring into, or take out of, China. When it turned out that the auction was apparently thwarted by a Cai Mingchao, a Chinese collector, "out of patriotic duty", the Chinese Government denied any prior knowledge or involvement. When Mr. Cai tried to justify his refusal to pay on the fact that SACH's new regulation on Christie's had prevented Christie's from delivering the bronzes to him, the head of SACH appeared to throw Mr. Cai under the bus, saying that the SACH regulation would not affect the return of the looted artifacts to China.