Pinault family offers to return looted Chinese relics

The family of French luxury goods retailer Pinault announced Friday in Beijing that it will donate two pieces of looted Chinese cultural relics back to China.

The relics, sculptures of a bronze rabbit and a bronze rat head, once appeared in the Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace. They were looted by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.

The two bronze heads were auctioned for 14 million euros (17.92 million U.S. dollars) each in Paris in 2009, which triggered wide international concerns and protests in China.

The Pinault family bought the sculptures from their previous owner and expressed its will to donate them back to China for free.

Pinault Group Chairman and CEO Francois-Henri Pinault is visiting China with French President Francois Hollande from April 25 to 26.

The Chinese side spoke positively of the act, regarding it as an observation of international conventions concerning the protection of cultural heritage, a token of friendship and conducive to bringing more looted Chinese relics back home.

China, along with many countries who lost their cultural relics, is making efforts to bring them back to their home country, which has received a positive response and support from the international community.

So far, five of the 12 bronze animal fountain heads in Yuanmingyuan have returned,and the Pinault donation will take the number to seven. But the whereabouts of five others are still unknown.

But more efforts are needed. UNESCO believes there are at least 17 million Chinese cultural relics abroad, far exceeding the number in the country's own museums.

A great number were looted, stolen and smuggled out of China between the 1860s and 1949, a period in which the country was subjected to invasions and civil wars.

Some Chinese collectors have worked to purchase such missing items under their own initiative and donate them to China's government. This is how the first five of the Yuanmingyuan's animal heads made their way back to their original home. Three were purchased by the China Poly Group Corporation at a cost of 30 million HK dollars. And Macau business magnate Stanley Ho privately bought the horse and pig head.

Other ways of claiming back relics include legal and diplomatic proceedings, as well as donations from abroad.

Legal and diplomatic retrieval is based on a series of international conventions that China has signed, including the 1970 UNESCO convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and the 1995 Unidroit Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects.

But experts say the fact that these conventions can not be applied retroactively forms a major obstacle for legal proceedings.

Xie Chensheng, honorary president of the China Society of Cultural Relics, said retrieving lost cultural relics is a long-term cause that requires patience.

"But we don't need to worry. People's consciences will eventually mean they hand them over," Xie added.