The Tale of the Auctioned Chinese Bronzes: Part 2
By Carol Huang | Asia editor 03.02.09
The Tale of the Auctioned Chinese Bronzes continued Monday with a bizarre twist. (The two sculptures – a rat’s head and a rabbit’s head looted from Beijing in 1860 by British and French troops – were sold last week by Christie’s in Paris amid strong protest from the Chinese government. Read the Monitor’s previous coverage here and here.)
Five days after the auction, the anonymous winning bidder revealed himself to be a Chinese national – and refused to pay the $36 million pledged.
The Associated Press described the move as an “audacious act of commercial sabotage.”
Cai Mingchao called it a patriotic duty. “What I need to stress is that this money cannot be paid,” he said at a press conference in Beijing. “At the time, I was thinking that any Chinese would do this if they could…. I only did what I was obliged to.”
Mr. Cai actually collects antiques and owns an auction house himself. But if Christie’s were on the lookout for this kind of stunt, it might have red-flagged Cai’s other work – as adviser to the National Treasures Fund, a group “backed by the Chinese Ministry of Culture that pools donations to retrieve relics abroad,” according to Bloomberg. A spokesperson for China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage said the foundation had no affiliation with the government.
Christie’s claims to have legal recourse to collect the money that was pledged, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, Pierre Bergé, the partner of the late designer Yves Saint Laurent, who owned the bronzes, said the relics will stay with him. “We will continue to live together in my home,” Mr. Bergé said.
Will there be a Part 3? Stay tuned.
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3. Michael E Piston | 03.02.09
China’s bitterness over the sale of its looted property is understandable. It is one thing for Western powers to resist compensating Third World countries and peoples for the crimes of long ago ancestors where any calculation of damages would be speculative. But to not only keep but even sell readily identifiable stolen loot should shock the conscience of civilized people everywhere, and is certainly far more deplorable than refusing to pay for stolen property.
4. Peter | 03.02.09
The Chinese would have a lot better moral claim on the bronzes if we didn’t all know that if they were left in China they would have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.
5. Faroos | 03.02.09
The Europeans have been selling looted treasures from other countries especially Egypt and Greece without consequence for too long. Now with China’s economic might, people buying these looted relics will think twice before they make a bid.
6. Chris | 03.02.09
Christie’s is going to have a dilemma here. It won an earlier ruling from a French court to go ahead with the auction on the ground that the plaintiff did not have standing. Guess what happen now. Does Christie’s want to give standing to Cai by suing him? Clearly, the substantive issues in the case, i.e., where the current ownership lies are very relevant in enforcing the sale or suing for the damages, and will have to be examined and argued.
Cai has a very good defense in that the Chinese cultural heritage protection agency has published new rules requiring Christie’s to present a detail account of provenance. Clearly, this can’t be satisfied by Christie’s in this case, the object being robbed, even if Cai pays up. Therefore, Cai has an unforeseen event that will make the taking of this object unlawful in China in view of these new rules and the performance of the sales contract meaningless.
8. yvonne | 03.04.09
look at those treasures in the British Museum & louvre, and u will find how hypocritic these british and french gentlemen are
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1. Wei | 03.02.09
Long Live Mr Cai MingChao.
Pierre Berge had better prove bill of sale or origin for Saint Laurent. These were thiefed from China !