Law must better protect cultural relics

SPEAKING TO THE MEDIA in Beijing on Saturday at the start of the session of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top political advisory body, Liu Yuzhu, head of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, said the safety of cultural relics is the bottom line and red line for the administration. Guangzhou Daily comments:

During a loan exhibition of 10 Terra Cotta Warriors to a museum in the United States, a young man snapped off the thumb of one of the figures, and hoping to hide what he had done by putting it in his pocket and walking off with it. The incident rings the alarm for better protection of cultural relics.

According to the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Exchange Center, which is responsible for looking after the burial objects of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), this is the first time any damage has been done to any of the figures in the 40 years they have been displayed in overseas exhibitions.

Those responsible for the nation’s cultural relics must fulfill their duties in safeguarding the exhibits and take all measures to minimize any risks.

The people in charge of protecting cultural relics should bear in mind that just because this is the first incident in decades that does not necessarily mean that they can relax their vigilance. Instead, no matter how good their safety records, each overseas exhibition should mean starting from scratch.

What is more worrisome is that in the sparsely populated far-flung regions in Northwest China, the cultural relics are under no effective protection. Almost half of the cultural relics theft cases are reported by local residents to the government — some long after the disappearance of the relics — and it is believed the number of the reported cases only accounts for a fraction of the actual number of thefts.

Given its limited funds and manpower, compared with the number of cultural relics that need to be protected, China still has a long way to go in cultural relics protection. The law, first of all, should be revised to make the penalty heavy enough to serve as a deterrent to the illegal thefts and dealers in stolen relics.