As Chinese government steps up efforts to retrieve the lost cultural relics abroad, France has secretly returned four solid gold antiques to China, according to the Telegraph's report on Monday.
The antiques, worth one million Euros (about 6.85 million yuan), were in the collection of the billionaire luxury tycoon Francois Pinault, who later donated them to Paris's Guimet museum of Asian art in 2000 as a favor to his friend Jacques Chirac, then French president.
Based on sources from China, the four gold heads of birds of prey were looted in 1992 from an ancient tomb of the Zhou dynasty (c. 11th century-256 BC) in Northwest China's Gansu province, which were then lost abroad due to a wave of relics thefts and smuggling in the mid-1990s.
Ten years ago, Chinese authorities filed a complaint via a French expert to retrieve the looted antiques, but to no avail. They continued their request for repatriation of the artifacts through diplomatic channels.
However, since gifts to French museums are in theory irrevocable, the return of the cultural relics reportedly proved to be a diplomatic nightmare.
The French Culture Ministry "retroactively annulled" the gifts and returned them to the donors, who then returned them to the country.
At last, Pinault personally handed the four birds of prey heads to the Chinese embassy in Paris in this April, without asking for any compensation, according to the Art Newspaper.
China now openly promotes efforts to repatriate looted cultures, either pressuring auction houses to cancel sales of contentious items or buying them through Chinese state owned companies.
