One of this week's major news was about metal figurines of animals being auctioned by Christie's and Sotheby's in Hong Kong. China claimed that those were works of art looted from its Summer Palace in Beijing during the Opium War of 1860. A government related company with links to the PLA reportedly paid US$4 million to buy back 2 of the pieces.
If the Chinese government claim (which I am sure can be independently verified) is true, then the auction is a blatant insult and challenge to the Chinese government and its people. It appeared to me that it was like an owner having had valuables stolen from his house found a few years later (except that this is a span of 140 years) that a high class salesman was trying to sell the items back to him in his own front yard! And no one says anything, not including the governments of the countries where the thieves originated. Although the individuals that stole the items are long dead and the 'prizes might have pass through many hands', it does not deny the fact that the original perpetrators committed their crimes under the cover of certain countries that still exist today. Surely those governments must feel some obligation to help the Chinese recover them.
While those governments' silence and the international community's disinterest in this is itself unacceptable to me, it also may be a sinister and brazen challenge to the Chinese government to see if it seizes the items and therefore end up interfering with the 'rule of law' in HK and its promised one country 2 system policy.
I am sure many Chinese must have felt the same and will remember this well into the future. Quietly but surely they will.
Note : Forwarded above note to Straits Times Forum but not published.
No comments:
Post a Comment