Controversial ivory the real draw at Beijing centre
With its sleek glass and wood exterior, the Tianya Antiques City is a temple to modern Chinese craftsmanship. Inside, the traders sell their wares from boutique stalls more like museums than markets — jade, emerald and coral.
But the real draw for visitors to the Beijing centre is also its most controversial: ivory.
As a high-level summit to combat wildlife trafficking and poaching opens in London Wednesday, hosted by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, shifting Chinese attitudes toward ivory will be one of the most important goals, given that it is the world’s most populous nation with a strong appetite for elephant tusk.
It will not be easy, as Fu Junjun, who works at her father’s ivory shop in the 11-floor market, testified. “The price of ivory keeps going up, and the government’s decision to destroy that ivory stockpile actually helped us,” she said, referring to the recent crushing of about 5.5 tonnes by Chinese authorities.
“The smaller stores now find it harder to get a good supply, but bigger stores like us have hardly felt any impact and it helped put the price up.”
Ivory is legal in China provided it comes from a government-registered dealer, and there continues to be a significant demand — partly as an increasingly valuable commodity and partly because, according to the principles of feng shui, ivory can “disperse misfortune and drive out evil spirits”. In 2008, the international community allowed four African countries — Na- mibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana — to sell their stockpiles of ivory to Japan and China for $15 million in an attempt to control the slaughter of elephants.
All of the ivory available in China is technically supposed to have come from that auction, and each carving carries its own certificate of provenance. But environmentalists warn that there is rampant cheating in the system.