How China has been robbing European museums for a decade, or the case of national honor

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Recently, theft from museums and private collections has become more frequent, which have two features in common: firstly, what is stolen then does not surface anywhere, and secondly … these are always works of art from China. Many already speculate that China has launched a massive operation to return home everything that the white colonists looted in the country in the nineteenth century.

The Jade Bowl Case

In the British city of Durham in 2012, the Oriental Museum was robbed. The robbery became one of the leaders in speed: it took two unknown persons only two minutes to grab two exhibits and escape. True, before that, they made a hole in the wall of the museum for forty minutes, and the plan itself, which made it possible to crank up both the destruction of the wall and the theft so quickly, thought over much longer.

The museum suffered three million dollars in damage: the experts estimated that one porcelain figurine and one jade bowl, decorated with a poem in Chinese, and the bulk of the amount fell precisely on the bowl. A week later, eighteen similar bowls were stolen from the Fitzwilliam Museum. This time, the work was not so clean, and the police managed to get to the criminals. A gang of Irish people was the culprit. Fourteen of its members were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment.

Although the items taken out of these two museums were found in hot pursuit buried in a vacant lot on the outskirts of Durham, before that the journalists had already managed to assure readers that the stolen goods would not be found. The fact is that the most meticulous have noticed that the thefts of Chinese works of art in Europe are systematic. And, if stolen canvases of Europeans, for example, now and then surface on the black market, then exhibits and masterpieces originally from China disappear with ends.

This usually means that there was a specific customer for the theft - therefore, then no one and nowhere tries to sell the stolen goods. But what could be a customer, obsessed with a huge number of Chinese gizmos, and how rich he is - after all, if the kidnapper has too little to offer, he will simply pay off the stolen one himself? What kind of private person could afford it? The conclusion of the journalists is staggering: none, since only the state could have launched such a large-scale operation.

Property of the Republic

One of the most bitter episodes in Chinese history, known to every schoolchild in the republic, is the plundering of the imperial palace by Europeans. The precious works of art accumulated over the centuries have left the country forever; some of them also had a sacred meaning, but in modern China this aspect is no longer important. Just as an Egyptian Copt examines the embankments of St. Petersburg with the feeling that he sees loot from his home, so Chinese tourists in museums in Europe do not even ask the question of where the masterpieces of Chinese work came from for the glass: obviously, China did not donate them to the museum.

The Chinese government has already stated that since 1840 at least ten million pieces of art and antiques have been exported from the country; the flow seriously decreased only in the second half of the twentieth century, when the armies of other powers ceased to endlessly invade the country. In some official speeches, the phrase sounded that everything stolen from China should be returned to their homeland. True, no comment on how, so it might just be a pressure on the conscience.

It is only since 2010 that thefts have swept across European museums, different from how they took place before: each time the robbers grabbed only and exclusively exhibits from China, and each of these exhibits disappeared forever. Did not pop up with private collectors, did not leave a trace in anonymous black market auctions, was not associated with any ransom demands.

A script suitable for cinema

In 2010, a gang of robbers set fire to several cars outside the Royal Palace Museum in Sweden and took advantage of the commotion to encircle the Chinese pavilion. The Irish gang that robbed the Oriental Museum in Durham robbed it twice before and, although they did not admit to the ordered nature of the robberies, they took out the items from China only. The first two robberies went without much fuss, and the stolen thing seemed to vanish into thin air. Many are confident that jade bowls would never have surfaced at British or any other European antique dealers - their transfer to a potential customer was prevented by a miracle (and by hard work of the police).

By the way, robbing the same museum several times, reducing the collection of exhibits from China, is also the norm of the last decade. For example, lovers of Chinese gizmos have encircled the KODE museum in Norway at least twice, each time taking out dozens of exhibits. Exactly one item from this museum was traced back to Shanghai, after which the Norwegian police surrendered, realizing that they could not wait for cooperation from the Chinese police. Not in this case.

Surprisingly, after it surfaced that one of the works of art from the Norwegian museum is now in China, the Chinese billionaire Huang Nubo suddenly made a generous donation to the museum with the explanation: "For the alarm." The museum apparently understood the hint and in response, just as generously donated all the columns of the plundered imperial palace it had to China, more precisely, to the University of Beijing. It is known that Nubo spoke out about how the display of stolen columns of the palace ravaged and destroyed by the Europeans hurts the country. However, he denies any connection between the events around the museum, the donation to the university and his donation.

Sometimes everything is according to the law

Chinese works of art, meanwhile, go to the republic in a completely legal stream: among Chinese businessmen, a fashion suddenly appeared to buy out lots at auctions that have special historical significance for China. In their impulse, they are surprisingly unanimous. Many suspect the Chinese government is behind this burst of patriotism among businessmen. After all, in the second half of the twentieth century, it entered the ransom of stolen goods from China into the official budget. For some reason, now, instead of the budget, it could use the personal capital of entrepreneurs.

It is known that some of them act directed and focused, not grabbing for any lot. So, there is a company that devotes all its energy and money to the search and redemption of twelve bronze animal heads from the fountain in the imperial palace. But most of the art and antiques exported from China are not put up for auction; they are part of the permanent exhibitions of museums like the French Montainebleau. By the way, the robbers ransacked the Chinese collection of Montainbleau in just seven minutes, not so far behind the record holders of the robbery from Durham.

Moreover, those Chinese works of art that were once sold to the West by Chinese artists, sculptors and resellers feel absolutely calm in all museums in the world - which quite definitely speaks against the version of fashion for antiques and figurines from China in general and in favor of the version that one of the largest countries in the world decided to restore justice by stealing a club from a thief.

Museum robbery is one of the most notorious types of crime. How The Mona Lisa Theft Revealed Picasso's Dark Secrets, or Strange Museum Thefts With Unpredictable Consequences.