According to Shanxi’s Cultural Relics Bureau, by mid-May 2014, Shanxi had made staged achievements in the general investigation of portable antiquities, the first one since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. Investigation into all 41,316 state-owned institutions in Shanxi has now basically been completed, showing that there are nearly 300,000 pieces of antiques in these organizations. Next, the Cultural Relics Bureau plans to identify and rate these antiquities.

The general investigation concerns itself with the portable antiquities kept or collected by state-owned institutions including government offices, public institutions, state-owned enterprises, state holding enterprises, and the army, etc. A fundamental principle of this investigation is not to change the ownership of the antiques. The investigated institutions will continue to keep them after the investigation.

As for the institutions with large collections, such as Shanxi Museum, Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, and Art Exhibitions of Shanxi, the data acquisition and information entry after the general investigation has already started to be carried out.