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China slaps controls on Christie's
by Sim Chi Yin, The Straits Times|01 March 2009

Beijing, China: China has slapped controls on Christie's, the auction house that sold two Qing dynasty bronze sculptures for a record sum in Paris on Wednesday.

The sale had gone ahead despite Beijing's repeated strongly-worded official protests and a last-ditch legal challenge by a group of 90 Chinese lawyers.

Beijing immediately denounced the sale of the 'illegally possessed' artefacts and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage stepped in to punish Christie's.

Warning that Christie's dealings in China will be 'affected', the agency ordered strict checks on all 'heritage items' that the London-based auction house and its employees try to take out of or bring into China.

Singling out Christie's in an official circular, Beijing accused the company of 'frequently (having) sold cultural heritage items looted or smuggled from China', and instructed the authorities to demand comprehensive documentation for its relics.

The controversy over the two fountainheads loomed large in Christie's three-day auction of the art collection belonging to the late French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his personal and business partner Pierre Berge.

Ties between Paris and Beijing have been strained since last year's fracas-filled Olympic torch run in Paris and French President Nicolas Sarkozy's meeting with the Dalai Lama last year. Those episodes had led China's so-called 'angry youth' to let rip online and picket French retail giant Carrefour's stores in China.

While news reports said groups of Chinese students in Paris had protested outside the auction venue this week, there are no signs of demonstrations here yet. Reactions online were mixed as netizens woke up yesterday to the news that the bronzes had been sold overnight.

There were angry calls from anonymous netizens to boycott France and its products, and some called for the government to 'teach Christie's a lesson'.

But cooler heads posted comments ranging from one chastising fellow netizens for 'acting as if you rule the earth' to those more pragmatic: 'What are cultural relics anyway? It's not as if we can eat them.'

The auction of the rabbit and rat heads - once part of a fountain in the imperial Summer Palace wrecked by invading British and French troops in 1860 - touches on a humiliating chapter of China's history. But the debate online raged only after Mr Berge offered to hand the bronzes back to China if Beijing 'gives the Tibetans back their freedom'.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.

» Disputed Chinese relics fetch $31m each

» Christie's put on notice after sale

» Auction of Chinese relics ‘shameful’: Jackie Chan

Comments
saywatever
guys, wat if christie's auction off stolen collector's watches stolen from cortina???!!!
ALL stolen properties must be returned to the rightful owner lah!
Dancatng
crazyazn, do you think Christie's auctioneer gives away the bid merchandise without collecting the cash 1st.  Naive!  It just merely spoiled the greedy seller's opportunity for the highest bid.  Seller will re-court the 2nd highest bidder.  OF course the 2nd highest bidder will take advantage of the situation to nego.  Certain auctions even have rules that the 2nd highest is obliged to stand by his last offered price!
Dancatng
Where the China bidder might have broken a contractual agreement, we have to give him credit for his innovations and the risk he undertook to his name,... just to prove his point and get the world to see the paradox of the situation.

I am amused at some forumers' reasoning.  If it had been your handphone which was stolen because intruders razed your house and help themselves to your properties, and then sell them on ebay auction, would you allow it as legitimate sale??? 

By the way, it was not so long ago that relics had been returned to Eygpt.  SO why not China? 

If you read history, you will realised how CHina over the centuries has suffered, taken advantage and looted.    Never mind if it was a 'repayment' for a debt because of opium pushing or for military 'services' rendered.  The British and French, even Japs were all there to take advantage of the distress.  It was all that simple. Till today, Asian still is being bullied.  (like cheap manufacturing enabled by Chinese toil only to be scorned by the same western consumers who benefited.  And now the toxic asset because of irresponsible western fat cats).

Role reversal.  If China had been the transgressor, and now selling English relics in Beijing, do you think that UK would sit idly in a bid???  

The truth is that the world that we live in now is an outcome of Anglo Saxon invasion.  Don't believe... look around you.  Even the way you think has been prescribed by Ang-Sax!!!  From 7 days week calendar to metric tons to Christmas to common laws to US$ to world quotas to mercantile practices...  Why is the world embracing English as the default international language?  Because of the deeds of Western colonisation.

A Westerner once bemused: "Why are stupid Asians prepared to pay thousands of dollars to an Italian or English opera but would not pay even a fraction for a Beijing opera???  And the Asian audiences have no clue of what they listening at italian opera???  We have been conditioned. No better than a dog in Pavlov theory if we tow their rules set to western advantage.
crazyazn
Christies will just pull out of the PRC and not accept any bids from the Chinese if the person who won the bid does not pay up and take pocession of his purchase. -It's not that only the Chinese have money to burn!!!
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