US hands over 41 cultural relics to China under deal to return artefacts
The US has returned 41 artefacts and antiques to China as part of a repatriation deal to help Beijing retrieve looted and smuggled relics.
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office in New York handed over the items to China's National Cultural Heritage Administration on Tuesday, according to state-owned broadcaster CCTV.
The oldest artefacts date from the Neolithic period (around 10,000BC - 1700BC) while the newest are from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). They include pottery, jade, bronzeware, and objects related to Tibetan Buddhism, according to CCTV.
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"It is the right thing to do to return these antiquities to their homeland," said Matthew Bogdanos, an assistant district attorney with the prosecutor's office, during the handover ceremony.
CCTV said the 41 relics had been "illegally exported from China".
The administration was informed through the Chinese consulate in New York that the Manhattan prosecutor's office had seized the 41 items while handling cases, according to the report.
It added that the administration had worked closely with the consulate to return the items.
According to the China Cultural Relics Academy, more than 10 million Chinese artefacts have been lost overseas since the mid-19th century, mostly due to wartime plunder and illegal smuggling.
China and the US first signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to restrict illegal imports of Chinese cultural items in 2009. The MOU has been extended three times - in 2014, 2019, and 2024.
Since the agreement was first signed, 594 artefacts have been returned to China, according to CCTV.
In April, the US returned 38 cultural items to China under the deal, mostly dating from the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) to the Qing dynasty. They included rare ivory and wood carvings and mural fragments.
The biggest batch of relics repatriated from the US to China was in 2019, when 361 cultural objects were retrieved.
However, the illegal looting and smuggling of artefacts, antiques and artwork is still a major problem for China
From 2011 to 2021, as many as 358 Chinese relics were stolen or lost, with most taken from Tibet autonomous region, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, and the provinces of Shaanxi and Henan, according to official data.
Patriotic sentiment has grown in China in recent years as ties with the West have soured. This has brought new attention to relics lost during the colonial era.
In 2023, a video series titled Escape from the British Museum became a viral hit among Chinese internet users. It tells the story of a Chinese teapot's quest to escape the London cultural institution and return to China.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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