Resurgent China steps up push to reclaim lost cultural relics

Online database of looted artefacts set up and agreements signed with over 20 countries to aid their recovery

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Proudly displayed on a stage at the National Museum of China late in March was a row of centuries-old Buddha heads and sculptures that had recently journeyed across the Taiwan Strait.

They were among 30 artefacts, mostly believed to have been stolen from central China's Shanxi province, that had been donated to Beijing by a Buddhist association in Taiwan.

This was the largest return of relics to mainland China from Taiwan in recent years, state media reported. And they are the latest in a series of lost artefacts to have found their way back to Beijing, as a resurgent China steps up efforts to bring its national treasures home.

Since the turn of the century, China has actively sought the return of its cultural relics that had been stolen or taken abroad.

This pursuit has become more prominent under President Xi Jinping, who has demonstrated a personal interest in protecting such artefacts and with it China's history and national pride.

His state visit to Rome in 2019 saw Italy return almost 800 cultural artefacts to Beijing, hailed as the largest repatriation of artefacts to China in over 20 years.

"Cultural relics and cultural heritage carry the genes and bloodline of the Chinese nation," he has said.

China has lost over 10 million cultural relics since the First Opium War began in 1840, according to estimates from the Chinese Society of Cultural Relics.

Some of these were looted during wartime most famously during the sacking of Beijing's Old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, by Anglo-French forces in 1860, which Chína regards as a national shame.

Some were stolen and smuggled out of the country by tomb raiders and mercenaries - locals and foreigners alike. And still others were either gifted to foreigners or exported legally from China.

Since Mr Xi came to power in 2012, China has secured the return of over 1,800 lost relics, according to official figures.