China is a country with a very long history, and a splendid enough civilization has supported our culture to this day, which means that we have enough cultural relics to amaze the world, in fact, with the plunder and robbery of modern invaders, China has a considerable number of cultural relics lost abroad.
According to INCOMPLETE STATISTICS BY UNESCO, there are more than 1.64 million Chinese cultural relics in the collections of more than 200 museums in 47 countries around the world, but this figure does not include overseas private collections. According to the statistics of the Chinese Cultural Relics Society, a total of 10 million Chinese cultural relics have been lost overseas.
These cultural relics lost abroad are mainly lost in the following three ways:
1. Plunder by modern invaders
In 1840, the Western powers used opium to open the door of the Qing government and launched the Opium War against the weak and incompetent Qing government, followed by an armed war of aggression against China composed of eight major countries led by Britain, Russia, Japan, France, Italy, the United States, Germany, and Austria.
Committed a heinous crime in human history, burning the Yuanmingyuan.
The Eight-Nation Alliance transported tens of millions of rare treasures, and those that could not be transported were burned with fire.
It is roughly estimated that there are about 1.5 million pieces, from the bronze ceremonial vessels of the pre-Qin period in China to the famous calligraphy and paintings of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and various rare treasures.
2. Blatant excavation
The Canadian missionary Huai Luguang was the bishop of the Christian Henan Episcopal Church, and in 1910 he built churches, run schools, and opened hospitals in Kaifeng, Shangqiu, Luoyang and other places, and he used his identity as bishop to wantonly seize the cultural relics of Henan, especially the two Zhou Dynasty noble tombs in Luoyang, and carried out destructive excavations, resulting in a large number of precious literature being scattered abroad, causing great damage to Chinese culture.
Warner was a notorious Dunhuang cultural relics thief, and also a famous explorer and archaeologist in the so-called modern United States.
He organized an archaeological team to go to Dunhuang, China, stripped more than 10 fine Tang Dynasty murals from the Mogao Caves, and stole the 328th cave painted statues to offer bodhisattva statues.
3. Smuggling of cultural relics
China's lost cultural relics have formed an international one-stop. From excavation to smuggling, until it appears in foreign trading markets, it can often be completed within a few days.
The amount of customs goods inspected in China's foreign trade is amazingly large, and many places can only take the form of spot checks to inspect customs goods, and the proportion of sampling inspections is generally 5%.
According to this low proportion of sampling inspections, the number of smuggled cultural relics seized every year is still considerable.
The number of existing cultural relics in China in various countries:
1. Major museums and libraries in the UK have a total collection of about 1.3 million cultural relics from chinese dynasties.
How to obtain it: Most of them were illegally plundered from China by invaders during the modern colonial period and exiled overseas.
2. Museums and libraries in France collect about 2.6 million cultural relics from Chinese dynasties.
How to obtain them: These cultural relics were illegally plundered from China during the modern colonial period.
3. Japan has more than 1,000 large and small museums, with a total collection of nearly 2 million chinese cultural relics.
How to obtain it: Most of them were plundered by the Japanese invading army during the eight-power alliance invasion of Beijing and the Japanese invasion of China.
4. Germany's major museums have a large number of ancient Chinese cultural relics, according to the country's relevant publications: the total number of documented is about 300,000 pieces.
How to obtain it: First, it was seized after the Eight-Power Alliance captured Beijing, and the other was stolen from China in the name of archaeology in the early 20th century.
5. Tsarist Russia, quantity unknown. Because the former Soviet Union was suspicious of bilateral relations, it moved to a secret place.
Acquisition method: Aggression plunder.
6. Canada's major cultural relics institutions have nearly 200,000 ancient Chinese cultural relics
Acquisition method: Aggression. Looting, looting
7. The US media revealed that in the past 30 years, there have been about 2.3 million Chinese cultural relics flowing into the United States, of which more than 200,000 fine works have been collected by major museums in the United States.
Acquisition method: Smuggling.
8. Austria, Switzerland and other countries have divided Chinese cultural relics to varying degrees.