The Loss of Cultural Relics in Modern Chinese History

Abstract

China’s long history has yielded an abundance of cultural relics. Unfortunately, since the mid-nineteenth century, many Chinese cultural relics have been destroyed or removed from China by various means. The term ‘lost cultural relics’ refers to Chinese cultural objects looted, stolen, clandestinely excavated or illegally trafficked between 1840 and 1949. Although there are no definitive totals of the lost Chinese cultural relics, the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics estimates more than ten million pieces of invaluable Chinese cultural objects have ‘sunk into oblivion’ in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asian nations since the First Opium War.