Looted artworks ‘stolen to order’ as Beijing’s elite reclaim heritage
PRICELESS Chinese works of art stolen in audacious robberies from galleries and museum in Britain and Europe are thought to be ending up in the private collections of Beijing billionaires.
Experts believe some artefacts are being stolen to order in the UK with the possibility that a new breed of Chinese super-rich are trying to reclaim their country’s heritage looted by invading armies, including British soldiers, during the 19th-century Opium Wars.
A series of heists dating back at least eight years are thought to be connected to a black market boom in the sale of stolen Oriental artefacts. One of the first thefts believed to specifically target Chinese works took place in 2010 when a gang smashed their way into the Swedish royal family’s Chinese Pavilion, stealing items from the state collection of art and antiquities.
A few month later, thieves grabbed 56 items from the China Collection at the Kode Museum, in Bergen, Norway. Many of the pieces targeted had been collected by a Norwegian officer in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
In 2012, a porcelain sculpture and jade bowl worth at least £3 million was taken from the Oriental Museum at Durham University. Then, thieves snatched objects, including Chinese jades, from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
The following year, Kode was targeted once again with Chinese art seized. Then, in 2015, display cases were shattered and Oriental art grabbed at the Chinese Museum in the Château de Fontainebleau in Paris. There was no doubt that thieves knew exactly what they were after because they completely ignored the 1,500 other rooms in the chateau. Their haul included works looted by French soldiers who had sacked Beijing’s Old Summer Palace in 1860.
One similarity connecting the heists is that most of the stolen art has never resurfaced, raising the likelihood that it is being held in a private collection.
Chinese billionaires outnumber their American counterparts. Many of them have taken up art collecting, with a particular interest in antiquities from their own country forcing up prices on both the open and black market.
Zhao Xu, director of Beijing Poly Auction, told China Daily: “Buying looted artwork has become high street fashion among China’s elite.”
James Ratcliffe, director of recoveries and general counsel at the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of stolen and looted art, believes private Chinese buyers, rather than its government, are buying Oriental art stolen from Western museums.
“There is no doubt that there has been over the last decade a spate of thefts of Chinese artefacts,” he said. “I don’t, however, think it’s state-sponsored. I think it’s highly likely that some of these works of art are ending up in the hands of wealthy Chinese individuals or potentially in private museums in China.
“People around the world have suffered looting of their cultural heritage. There’s a very understandable desire to see it returned. And in China in particular you have a combination of significant wealth and the desire for looted art to return home. There is also a widely held view that these pieces are not legitimately held in the West.”