Duan Yong, a senior cultural expert: Multiple measures should be taken to recover the cultural relics lost from overseas China
As a big country of cultural heritage, China has suffered a painful loss of cultural relics in its history. With the prosperity of the contemporary national strength, every news of the return of the lost cultural relics will attract wide attention from the society.
In the past December, two Ming Dynasty terracotta figures donated by friendly people from the United States were officially collected in the Shanghai Museum, the exhibition was held in Minhang, Shanghai, and the first “International Day on Fighting Illegal Trafficking in Cultural Property” was held in Shanghai University……Many activities related to the loss of cultural relics from overseas show the process and fruitful results of the return of national treasures from different perspectives.
Why is the return of the overseas lost cultural relics so popular?
Duan Yong, deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Shanghai University and a senior cultural expert, pointed out in an interview with China News Service that overseas cultural relics are also the carrier and material evidence of Chinese history and culture, which constitute a part of the “jigsaw puzzle” of Chinese history and culture, so their existence is related to the understanding of the integrity of Chinese history and culture.
Although it is of great significance for the public to recover the lost cultural heritage and have a deeper understanding of Chinese civilization, China still faces great difficulties to recover the lost cultural relics overseas.
Duan Yong said that compared with the huge number of lost overseas cultural relics, the successful return of cultural relics is still just a drop in the ocean.
From the current model of the return of lost cultural relics in China, there are mainly diplomatic negotiation, commercial repurchase, donation or the active return of holders, while the proportion of legal channels that the public has the greatest hope is relatively low.
China has acceded to some international conventions, but the convention itself has some defects and limitations, such as retroactivity and binding force. Although the bilateral agreement can alleviate these difficulties to some extent, there are still domestic laws such as the flow of cultural relics into the country.
” How to make good use of international conventions, bilateral agreements and domestic laws of the countries concerned, and use more legal channels to recover the lost cultural relics, has become the biggest challenge facing China to recover the lost cultural relics from overseas.
” Duan Yong said.
The shortage of professional talents is also one of the difficulties facing the recovery of lost cultural relics in China.
As early as 2008, Shanghai University established the “Lost Overseas Cultural Relics Research Center”, and in May last year, it established the China Overseas Cultural Relics Research Center.
Duan Yong said, today’s center has formed the middle of different age echelon team, archaeology, museum, testing the protection of cultural relics and technology analysis and other discipline background, and take the lead in domestic universities opened Chinese courses in the field of overseas cultural relics, for China training overseas professionals in the field of cultural relics, is becoming China’s talent incubators in the field of overseas loss of cultural relics.
” In the future development, we hope that the center can become an exchange and cooperation center for overseas lost cultural relics with international influence with the support of relevant parties.
”
In fact, from the perspective of the whole international environment, the return of lost cultural relics is the trend of The Times. Especially under the pressure of the recovery of lost cultural relics and the trend of “post-colonialism” in Europe and the United States, some museums in Europe and America have accelerated the return process of lost cultural relics in recent years.
Duan Yong believes that in recent years, under the attention of the government and the support of various aspects, China has made remarkable achievements in the loss of cultural relics recourse, many national treasure successful return to the motherland, should continue the current gratifying momentum, efforts to take various forms to continue to increase the intensity of recourse loss of cultural relics, especially pay attention to through legal way.We will make full use of international conventions and bilateral agreements, and strive to make more and better lost overseas national treasures return home as soon as possible.
Duan Yong specifically mentioned that most of the countries along the “Belt and Road” are countries with a long history and rich cultural relics resources. Like China, they are important cultural relics lost, and are also facing the responsibility of recovering lost cultural relics.
Against this common background, China can timely launch international cooperation on the protection of cultural relics and the return of the lost cultural relics within the framework of Belt and Road “, and jointly and lead countries with the desire or demand of the lost cultural relics to pursue joint efforts.
(intact)