Greece says the recent theft or damage of some 2 000 artefacts from the British Museum reinforces its claims for the return of the Elgin marbles, and China is now pressing a claim for the return of thousands of items it says the world-famous museum is clearly unable to look after properly.
The British Museum has the biggest collection of Chinese antiquities in the West. According to its website, it has about 23 000 Chinese objects, spanning from the Neolithic age to the present.
According to the BBC, these include a large range of precious items such as paintings, prints, jade, bronzes and ceramics. One of the most famous is the reproduction of a scroll called ‘Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies’, a masterpiece considered a milestone in Chinese art history.
China’s Global Times – a daily tabloid newspaper published under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily – published an editorial challenging the museum to give back all Chinese cultural relics ‘free of charge’.
The demand became a trending topic on Weibo.
According to the BBC, a Weibo post reading, ‘Return the objects to their original owner,’ earned more than 32 000 likes.
Not everyone agreed, however. A post reading, ‘Why don’t you make a trip to the UK for our treasures? Just shouting on Weibo domestically is just playing safe and shameless,’ was liked more than 10 000 times.
The BBC also reports that Greece’s Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, was quoted as saying that the security questions raised by the missing objects ‘reinforces the permanent and just demand of our country for the definitive return’ of the Elgin marbles.
Nigerian officials have also called on the museum to return the Benin Bronzes taken from the Benin kingdom that now lies within its territory.
[Image: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/china]