
The Great Chinese Art Heist - prismatic
https://www.gq.com/story/the-great-chinese-art-heist
======
ConfusedDog
Causality and morality are operating separately. Because of the Old China's
Empirical Close Door Policy, they got invaded by Europeans. Because of the
invasion, art works were robbed, the Old China fell and the New China was
born. Because of the New China's destruction of the Four Olds, some art works
were destroyed. Because of many art works were stolen, they got preserved and
being stolen back to the New China gradually. Like clock work.

In morality, Who has the right to those art works? Invader robbers who
unintentional preserved the art works or the new generation of descendants who
are stealing the art works back? People can argue all day. It's much more
difficult to see the result from a morality perspective...

~~~
qiqing
> Because of the Old China's Empirical Close Door Policy, they got invaded by
> Europeans. Because of the invasion, art works were robbed, the Old China
> fell and the New China was born.

By Close Door Policy, are you including making opium illegal and trying to
enforce that law within the borders until the drug cartel showed up with a
navy behind it? Are you familiar with the Opium War?

People of my grandparents generation were born into a lot of trauma. My
grandfather was sold by his own parents into indentured servitude to support
their opium habit for which they had already sold their farmland. (Those were
desperate times when people decided to follow a populist leader who didn't
know how to govern, and who, though vilified by the West, can be more
described as a combination of the positive attributes of Bernie Sanders and
the negative attributes of Donald Trump.)

Rich people had a lot of privilege and on the receiving end of a lot of anger
from poor people, once there weren't many foreigners around to be mad at any
more, and some of the aristocrats really were jerks. But some wealthy people
were just idealistic and trying to fix the country instead of fleeing to other
parts of Southeast Asia (a mistake made by other parts of my family), and were
in for a world of hurt.

So, in your opinion ... if European soldiers looted my home and stole works of
art (which actually did happen to my family), and later on, other works of art
were destroyed by mobs of poor people who attacked my family, you're saying
that it makes what the European looters did totally ok and they can keep their
loot?

~~~
qiqing
I don't understand the downvotes. I'm describing the personal experience of my
own family, and trying to relate it to this audience.

Sometimes, people like to lump all Chinese people together as a monolith
without any nuance, as though the crimes that angry mobs of poor people
visited upon my family justifies the crimes committed by foreigners against my
family just a little bit earlier.

There is no rhyme or reason to the suffering visited upon us by either party.

~~~
pertymcpert
Can you tell me how to downvote. I’ve been on HN for years and never seen a
downvote button.

~~~
grzm
Accumulate 500+ karma.

~~~
pertymcpert
Ah, that’s fine then.

------
jhpriestley
Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen
artworks:
[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889188)

The claims of European museums to art stolen in the past seem indefensible to
me. Hard not to root for the criminals in this case, if they really are
repatriating stolen artifacts.

~~~
laverick
I find the issue a bit more complex. If keeping a Greek statue is
indefensible, what about land in North America?

~~~
pjc50
The issue of "at what point land in history did stealing land become something
illegitimate that we should reverse" is extremely fraught. It was a major part
of both the UN and the League of nations to delegitimise this, but it wasn't
systematic.

Israel's seizure of land at the Six Day War seems to be the exact point at
which nobody can agree. It's the last of the settler states.

~~~
logfromblammo
What country should control Crimea?

Greece, Iran, Italy, Mongolia, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine all have potential
claims.

If annexation by force is no longer a legitimate means of acquiring land, then
it is reasonable to say that it was never legitimate. If it is, then going to
war to take territory is still possible. But there really is no fair way to
declare a fixed epoch and say that forceful annexation was only legitimate in
the prior era, and is now unacceptable in the following era.

Either conquest is still okay, or it never was.

If it never was, you must be prepared to support repatriation claims from
aboriginal peoples until the end of time. Perhaps there is a case for
establishing adverse possession for land sovereignty. If you can take it and
keep control of it for 20 years, your claim is presumed valid.

And it could give national rivals a nice, limited territorial war every 18
years or so, to feed their military industrial complexes through hard times,
when the world is just too peaceful to make a profit.~

~~~
394549
> If annexation by force is no longer a legitimate means of acquiring land,
> then it is reasonable to say that it was never legitimate. If it is, then
> going to war to take territory is still possible. But there really is no
> fair way to declare a fixed epoch and say that forceful annexation was only
> legitimate in the prior era, and is now unacceptable in the following era.

There's something to be said for systems that, more-or-less, are practical and
work without making perfect logical sense or being perfectly self-consistent.

Building a perfect legal regime has a lot in common with building a perfect
software application.

~~~
logfromblammo
Correct, which is to say that no, the museum pieces will not be repatriated
voluntarily. Make a cash offer if you want them so badly.

~~~
rebuilder
Or just steal them back. Why not?

~~~
logfromblammo
Exactly. If they really wanted to keep them, they'd have better security.

------
Bayart
A lot of the Summer Palace's current state is due to the state of neglect in
which it was left afterwards by the successive regimes.

The conservancy policies in China are generally quite appalling. Monuments are
either disneyified for tourism and bigotted propaganda or left to rot/built
over without a care in the world.

~~~
adventured
A recent example of that from 2016, when a large stretch of the Great Wall was
paved over flat with concrete, in what was claimed to be an act of
restoration:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/asia/china-great-
wa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/world/asia/china-great-wall-botched-
repair.html)

[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
china-37442276](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-37442276)

~~~
fspeech
There is not one single "Great Wall". There are many stretches and thousands
of miles of them, built and rebuilt over thousands of years, all in various
stage of decay save for a few sites preserved for tourism. Peter Hessler wrote
a very readable piece for the New Yorker:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/21/walking-the-
wa...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/05/21/walking-the-wall)

------
kev6168
It's interesting to see these European nations are publicly displaying these
pilfered stuff, knowing many of them carry ugly history, in museums for the
whole world to see.

Is this "matter of fact" mindset an unique trait of European cultures? No
judgement is passing here, I am only curious about the thinking and mindset. I
would venture to guess that nations of other cultures in modern days probably
would feel very uncomfortable to openly display artifacts sourced in similar
ways.

~~~
candiodari
Firstly, note that art is considered stolen if it's outside of it's place of
origin, regardless of whether it was paid for or not.

So:

[https://www.si.edu/collections](https://www.si.edu/collections)

"The Smithsonian's collections represent our nation's rich heritage, _art from
across the globe_ , and the immense diversity of the natural and cultural
world."

In other words, the Smithsonian has plenty of stolen art.

But what about real "other" cultures ?

[http://en.chnmuseum.cn/tabid/520/Default.aspx?ExhibitionLang...](http://en.chnmuseum.cn/tabid/520/Default.aspx?ExhibitionLanguageID=232)

Yep, China does it too.

[https://independent-
travellers.com/malaysia/kuala_lumpur/nat...](https://independent-
travellers.com/malaysia/kuala_lumpur/national_museum/)

So does Malaysia ... plenty of Chinese and even Western objects.

Can't easily find too many others, but of course in the middle east the
collections also contain much stolen art.

~~~
stvswn
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. Are you literally saying that art must
remain geographically located at its origin forever? That seems insane.

~~~
candiodari
Wouldn't you say that's the general consensus if the work is considered
important ?

The British museum paid for most of their artworks. Granted, probably not what
they were worth, but certainly a price the sellers were willing to accept.

~~~
jfk13
Who's to say "what they were worth" at that time and in that place? Pretty
much the only indication we have is whatever price the buyer was willing to
pay and the seller was willing to accept.

We might consider them "priceless" objects in a museum now, but that doesn't
tell us anything about what they were worth at the time of acquisition. The
"value" of an artwork is almost entirely a cultural construct, not something
inherent in the object, and may vary drastically across both time and space.

------
justicezyx
Can we stop this subtle unconscious linkage embedded in the article.

Seems anything related to China is hidden with a connection with the
government or some kind of populist concerted movement.

The authors know too well such articles serves the stereotype and did nothing
to state the fact clearly.

~~~
qiqing
It's possible that the author wasn't trying to play into the stereotypes but
the editor wanted to stay "on-message" and asked for revisions in order to be
published.

------
onemoresoop
> Most of the plunder was taken back to Europe and either tucked away in
> private collections or presented as gifts to royal families. Queen Victoria
> of Britain was given a pet Pekingese dog, the first of its kind ever seen in
> Europe. Unabashed by its provenance, she named it Looty.

The "looty" is going back to China via museum heists. The only way this art
could be preserved in European collections is to temporarily remove it from
museums and keep it hidden away. IMO, if China wants its looted art back they
should reach out through official channels and negotiate their return.

~~~
chillacy
This is the official policy:

> ... David Cameron during a visit to India in 2010, when he was asked if
> Britain would ever return the [Kohinoor Diamond].

> "If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty,”
> said the Prime Minister then. "I think I'm afraid to say, to disappoint all
> your viewers, it's going to have to say put."

~~~
onemoresoop
It's a difficult thing to do and there are so many hidden strings and
interests at stake but the reality is quite clear. A lot of things were looted
and are in our western countries somehow illegally. IMO they should be
returned to their countries of origin if evidence of that says so. If things
were bought/sold and there are documents to attest that, they could stay.

~~~
onemoresoop
And illegally obtained art should be out of our museums, period.

I wonder if, on the private market and not museum worthy, whether the prices
for these would go down.

------
akshayB
During last couple of hundred years Europeans colonized good portion of Asian
countries and lot of history and art of taken back to Europe. Now lot of
European countries hold these things in museums. It is a source of income for
these countries and also attracts tourism ecosystems, so they are never going
to give it back to countries it came from.

Also I sometimes find it ironic some of these museums in European hold very
little local history, instead they hoard history of other countries they ruled
in past.

~~~
vertline3
A lot of the lack of old art in china is due to the "destruction of the four
olds."

~~~
justicezyx
What's the point?

Does that legalize the current status quo that what are inside the non Chinese
museums have all their rights and good will to keep what their ancestors
robbed from China?!

Please speak you thoughts clearly.

~~~
i_am_nomad
The Western museums preserved Chinese artifacts that otherwise would have been
destroyed by the Chinese themselves. That fact does indeed legitimize the
status quo. The artifacts must and will remain, excluding those pilfered by
the criminals described in the article.

~~~
Leary
If I rob your house and take your furniture, and then later see you burning a
chair on your lawn. Am I absolved of the theft in the first place if I kept
your furniture nice and clean in my house?

~~~
i_am_nomad
You’re committing the depressingly common fallacy of scaling interpersonal
ethics up to intercultural. Let me suggest that you give some thought to how
your analogy fails in this regard.

~~~
Leary
Note that you do not address the claim that an immoral act (the destruction of
Chinese art during the Cultural Revolution) does not absolve another one (the
pillaging of Chinese art by Europeans decades/centuries earlier). If scaling
interpersonal ethics up to the intercultural is a common fallacy (which it's
not), then you have committed the depressingly common fallacy of Argument from
Fallacy [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy)

~~~
lainga
If it is not a common fallacy, let me make an appeal to you:

If I go to your house and beat you up, you have every right to call the police
on me and they should be able to throw me in jail, and keep an eye on me until
I've reformed my ways. However, this doesn't mean you can go to _my_ house and
start stealing all my things: just like any other immoral act, as you point
out, one crime doesn't absolve another. This should apply even if you're a
policeman.

Accordingly, the USSR should not have seized Kaliningrad, Stettin, and
Silesia. Don't you think those territories should be returned to Germany?

~~~
qiqing
Both of you are lumping all Chinese people together as a monolith. Let's put
it this way.

If you come to my house and beat me up and loot my stuff, and then burn most
of my house down, but I survive, and then a mob of poor people came by and
then destroyed other artifacts in my house, do the actions of the mob of poor
people absolve you, the original looter?

Does it complicate or simplify things if you, the original looter, also sold
opium to the mob of poor people?

~~~
i_am_nomad
And you're lumping Western people together in the exact same way.

~~~
qiqing
Would you care to provide some nuance then?

------
qiqing
Excerpt from near the end of the article (about Summer Palace zodiac heads,
separate pieces from the heists):

> The curator guided me toward a dark, carpeted room in the rear of the
> museum. Inside, each of the four revered heads—the ox, the tiger, the
> monkey, and the pig—had been given its own display case, in which it sat
> atop purple velvet cushioning.

> “The first time I saw them, I was so excited,” the curator told me. She
> spoke in a low, reverential whisper. She was a student then and remembered
> how, on the day the heads were officially returned, her entire school had
> watched the ceremony on television. Students wept at their desks.

------
EliRivers
I wonder how long a second nation has to hold onto an item that orginally came
from another nation before it becomes more a piece of the second nation's
history and culture than the first.

Does it _never_ become that? Is it just relative amount of time?

Does it depend on the rationale for the first nation requesting its return
i.e. is return of stolen goods different to return of goods legally purchased?
Is it different to goods that the first had effectively discarded or thrown
away?

~~~
glitchc
This is an interesting insight. How about the following test: If the art
reflects the culture of the adopted nation, then it belongs there. If not,
then no.

~~~
EliRivers
And if it doesn't reflect the culture of either? Does it no longer belong
anywhere? I suppose it must be possible for it to belong in a nation whose
culture isn't reflected in the art, since many nations have historical art
that doesn't reflect their contemporary culture.

The idea that millennia old artifacts automatically belongs to a person or
group because they live in the kind of area where it was made a thousand years
previously just doesn't seem very satisfactory. Maybe it's the word "belong";
historical, meaningful or significant art feels like it shouldn't "belong" to
anyone in the same sense of "belong" that I can own a tin of peas.

Cave paintings in El Castillo, 40000 years old. The word "belong" really
doesn't feel right.

------
HillaryBriss
> _Officials in China told Christie 's, the auction house, that if the heads
> were ever sold off, there would be “serious effects” on the firm's
> business._

I admire the single-minded dedication to purpose which the unified central
government brings to bear. With that kind of focus and coordination, the
government often achieves its goals with little effort.

------
qiqing
Notable excerpt from the article:

Some have stood their ground, arguing the legitimacy of their acquisitions or
touting the value to the Chinese of sharing their culture abroad. Others have
quietly shipped crates of art back to China, in hopes of avoiding trouble with
either the thieves or the government.

In 2013, for instance, two of the famed zodiac heads, the rabbit and the rat,
from the estate of the French designer Yves Saint Laurent, were handed over
after a planned auction was scuttled. Officials in China told Christie's, the
auction house, that if the heads were ever sold off, there would be “serious
effects” on the firm's business. (Not long after the heads were returned,
Christie's became the first international fine-art auction house to receive a
license to operate independently in China.)

------
giarc
Is there any irony in the fact that the Chinese government is stealing back
artwork that was once theirs, while at the same time stealing IP from
international companies?

One may argue that artwork and IP isn't on the same level, but it's a bit
hypocritical right?

~~~
justicezyx
> stealing back artwork that was once theirs

Where in the article says this?

~~~
giarc
This was all artwork that was stolen by Europeans and brought back to Europe.
That is pretty clear.

------
ConfusedDog
Technically, these artworks should be "properties the world. " It would be
nice if all artworks return to their original countries eventually like
Pandas. Maybe loan to other countries' museums for display with earn
royalties. That would make traveling to the artworks of original countries
much more worthawhile. And have countries sign a UN agreement to preserve
their own artworks with a common standard.

------
pnathan
What if the US was invaded and the original Constitution stolen, and put on
display? I think it would eat at any patriotic American's heart a little.

~~~
AcerbicZero
Losing an item is also a part of history. Should we have sent the British a
bill for burning the White House back in 1812, and be demanding payment to
this day, or was rebuilding it, and enshrining the history of its burning in
our culture the better decision? I'd argue the later.

I guess my point is that the objects aren't the history. Ideally there would
be a more open system to allow the study of older artifices, but in the end I
think maintaining a link to the history is more important than possessing the
actual object. Of course if that became the norm its likely at some point most
objects would be repatriated over time anyway, excluding those where the
location become historically relevant itself.

~~~
pnathan
I would suggest that it's not appropriate to tell other people how to view
their own history, particularly history that is recent enough that living
people either remember it or spoke to those who did.

I do think there's definitely a real debate about when an artifact passes from
"hey, that's ours, give it back" to "what a fascinating bit of world history,
belonging to the world".

There's _also_ a very real history of _literal_ colonialism going on here,
that simply can not be discarded. It is probably an accurate concept to
contexualize this as part of a country decolonizing itself and asserting that
it has a valid history.

Contextualizing for American audiences, the Summer Palace was burnt in the
same time period as our civil war, and _those_ ghosts are not near laid to
rest.

Anyway, like I said: if someone stole the Constitution, I'd generally be sore
about it and see it as a patriotic good to get it back. even tho' there are a
ton of copies everywhere, and the value is in the ideas.

------
rustacean
if the European thieves returned the artworks?

