preface:
In August 2018, an American magazine published an article titled "The Great Looting of Chinese Cultural Relics." In recent years, the frequent theft of cultural relics in museums in European and American countries has been directly linked to China. It even directly claimed that "China placed orders from thieves", which led to the theft of cultural relics in many foreign museums.
So, what is the evidence for this media to reach such a ridiculous conclusion? What is the truth behind this matter?
1. International thieves who specialize in stealing the "Chinese Pavilion" of foreign museums
In 2010, Bergen, Norway's second largest city, a famous museum in Europe, was stolen. The theft of 56 precious items shocked the world of cultural relics.
Rabbit head in the 12 zodiac signs
This museum, full name KODE Museum, has a collection of more than 2,000 Chinese cultural relics and is one of the largest collections of Chinese cultural relics in Europe. The 56 cultural relics stolen this time are all Chinese cultural relics.
A few years later, the museum was still in existence, and 22 more cultural relics were stolen, all of which were Chinese cultural relics without exception.
In 2015, 22 Chinese cultural relics in the collection of the Fontainebleau Palace in France were stolen within 7 minutes, and a real version of the "Amazing Devil Thief" was staged.
In August 2010, there was a fire in the Zhuoning Home Palace in Sweden, which collected cultural relics, and the staff spent a lot of effort to extinguish the fire, and as a result, they went in to see that among the many cultural relics collected here, the cultural relics of other countries did not move, only the Chinese cultural relics were stolen.
There are many similar examples, and the combination of these museum theft incidents inevitably makes people wonder whether there is really a "heaven-shattering group" that specializes in stealing Chinese cultural relics, hunting in the major museums of western powers, and "recycling" the Chinese cultural relics that were robbed by them in the past?
This American magazine, in the so-called "Great Looting of Chinese Cultural Relics", used the above examples to try to insinuate that the theft of these museums abroad is related to China.
White jade pillar of the Old Summer Palace in the collection of the Kode Museum in Norway
To this end, they also presented two specious pieces of evidence:
First, in recent years, Chinese officials and non-governmental organizations have been working hard to recover various cultural relics that have been looted by Western powers in modern times. Even at a high price, he bought back Chinese cultural relics from international thieves of "unknown origin".
China's attitude of desperately recovering cultural relics has allowed "international thieves" to see opportunities, resulting in frequent theft of foreign museums.
In addition, the second evidence presented in this article is that in foreign museums, only the "Chinese Pavilion" is often the most likely to be stolen. In other words, thieves always "favor" Chinese cultural relics, and do not steal cultural relics from other countries, and specialize in stealing cultural relics from the Chinese Pavilion.
If it is just an ordinary cultural relics thief, why not steal cultural relics from other countries and steal Chinese cultural relics exclusively?
So, what's going on here? How should the Western media refute this naked slander and presumption of guilt?
Second, thieves also act according to economic laws
In fact, the so-called "theft of foreign museums is related to China" in the Western media is not worth arguing at all.
Because from the root point of view, these cultural relics are originally ours, the decline of modern China, the West with its own ships and cannons, openly invaded the mainland, looted the mainland cultural relics, this is their own history also admitted.
Before 2,000 years ago, Confucius set the tone for Chinese culture of "repaying grievances with virtue, how to repay morality". Chinese is more peaceful and reasonable. But the truth is for the "reasonable people", what reason do you tell a bunch of robbers?
But this matter is indeed quite strange, so many Western museums have been stolen, but the losses are All Chinese cultural relics, it is inevitable that people will be curious, who is helping Chinese?
Is it true that there is a "heaven-shattering demon bandit group"?
When the Anglo-French army burned the Yuanmingyuan, the Kangxi jade Ruyi, worth 700 million US dollars, was stolen and stored in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States
The answer is actually a bit stubborn, such a "heaven-shattering demon bandit group" that is specially for Chinese cannot exist. In the simplest sense, these foreign museums with Chinese cultural relics are strictly wary of Chinese.
They have done various preventive measures to this end, such as when Chinese tourists visit Chinese cultural relics, they need to be accompanied by museum personnel, or they are not allowed to get too close to the cultural relics, and even more, directly hide the real cultural relics and place a fake charge outside.
All of this points to an answer, can really understand the inside story of the museum, and even from the heavily guarded museum, the international thieves who steal cultural relics are mostly foreigners themselves, and they must also be foreigners who are related to these museums and familiar with the inside affairs of museums.
So the question arises, since the "international thieves" are all foreigners, why do they steal Chinese cultural relics?
In fact, in this matter, the mainland is not doing nothing. It's just that what we do has nothing to do with the theft of foreign museums, but just continues to develop our own economy.
People often say that when there is enough food and clothing to know honor and disgrace, and when the economy develops, various spiritual needs will naturally arise. In the field of cultural relics in the world, there is no country or nation that is so obsessed with its own culture and history as Chinese and likes to collect cultural relics.
The international thief must also follow the basic economic laws. The so-called demand determines production, Chinese rich, such as hunger and thirst to collect their own country and national cultural relics, naturally gave birth to the rapid development of the Chinese cultural relics market.
Ruins of the Old Summer Palace
The thieves took such a big risk to openly steal cultural relics from foreign museums in order to make money. If you steal the artifacts of a small African country in the Gambia (if they have cultural relics), the people there will only grow peanuts, there is no spiritual need for cultural relics, and if you steal them, you can't sell them for a price, so naturally they won't steal.
In addition, among the countries of the world, the Western countries are one, many small and medium-sized countries are the vassals of developed countries in Europe and the United States, if you directly steal the West's own cultural relics, when you sell, you will be caught by the Western police, the thieves are not stupid, naturally there is no interest.
In this comparison, only stealing Chinese cultural relics is the most cost-effective. Naturally, a group of giant thieves who specialize in stealing Chinese cultural relics have been born.
So, doesn't this mean that the accusations of the Western media are justified to a certain extent, and it is precisely because the mainland's obsession with its own cultural relics has "encouraged" these Western cultural relics thieves?
Third, when the robber state meets the robber people
On the surface, this specious statement seems to have some truth. But if you think about it a little deeper, you know that this is pure groundless accusation.
First of all, the argument that "mainland officials and non-governmental organizations have been using various means to recover cultural relics" has encouraged "the theft of international thieves" is untenable from the bones.
Westerners themselves admit that these cultural relics are "Chinese cultural relics". Since it is a Chinese cultural relic, we did not force these countries to return it, but only expressed our love for our own cultural relics.
Western hegemonism manages the sky and the earth, and you can't control Chinese like the historical relics of your own country, right?
The real problem behind this is that the country of the robbers meets the people of the robbers. The self-conflict that belongs to Western culture has nothing to do with China.
Gu Kaizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty," a tang dynasty facsimile of gu kaizhi's "Female History" is now in England
Since the beginning of the colonial era, the Western powers have openly robbed the whole world. In this way, he has shaped his global hegemony for hundreds of years, but he has also integrated the thinking habits of mercenary and looting into the bones of Westerners.
Under the influence of this culture, the state wants to grab benefits from other countries at all costs, and enterprises want to suppress other companies at all costs and gain a monopoly position.
Marx summed up this kind of thinking as the evil that capital brings to the world, but in fact, in addition to the power of capital, cultural traditions, historical habits and other factors are also important factors that cause self-conflict in the Western world.
For Western public opinion and the media, they have no position at all to blame the Western thieves who stole Chinese cultural relics, because these things themselves were stolen by them. Your country can rob and steal, why can't individuals?
Since they can't blame the Western thieves, they can only look for scapegoats, and gradually develop, China, which has the ability to appreciate the cultural relics of its own country and the need to appreciate, has become the object of their throwing pot.
But this incident is to say that the sky is broken, and it cannot change the fact that Chinese cultural relics are themselves Chinese. Chinese love their artifacts without any problems.
As for those Western thieves, because of the development of China's cultural relics market, one by one they like to steal Chinese cultural relics from foreign museums, which belongs to the internal contradictions of the Western countries themselves and has nothing to do with us.
IV. Conclusion
This is actually quite chilling, not that the Western countries have robbed our cultural relics, and now they accuse us of loving our country's cultural relics and are cold.
Rather, it is because, hundreds of years have passed, and the European and American countries and their cultures that hold world hegemony have not only made no progress, but have shown a trend of retrogression.
The chivalry of the Middle Ages, the humanism of the Renaissance era, did not shape a positive culture, but under the power of capital and technology, it gave birth to a "vampire" who lived above the entire human civilization.
What is chilling is that these people are no longer ashamed of shame, but of shame. It is as if dark matter meets positive matter, and this cultural irreconcilability will eventually lead to great annihilation, which may be a huge disaster for the overall civilization of mankind.
What a pessimistic fact!