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Gangster logic at play

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-30 07:40

What is supposed to be the definition of gangster logic?

We Chinese usually use the expression to describe the way that someone uses force to thrust into the throat of others his argument or something that others believe is not right.

The expression refers to the way of thinking gangsters usually follow - they would often believe what they get by force from others should definitely belong to them.

The refusal by the French collector to return to China the cultural relics their forces had stolen from the country in 1860 follows just the same logic.

Chinese people have enough reason to feel angry about the coming auction in Paris of the rabbit and mouse heads, which had been stolen when the British and French forces destroyed Yuanmingyuan or the Old Summer Palace, in suburban Beijing.

There were 12 such animal head sculptures kept in the palace. They were made according to the traditional 12 symbolic animals representing the 12-year cycle in traditional Chinese lunar calendar. They were lost when the palace was pillaged and finally set on fire by British and French forces in 1860.

Five of them have already been recovered so far, and they are heads of ox, monkey, tiger, pig and horse. Most of them were bought back when they were auctioned except for one that was bought back for about $700,000 by Macao entrepreneur Stanley Ho from a US art collector last year.

It does make sense for the relevant organizations in the country to pay for the return of these stolen cultural relics as those art collectors who are in possession of them have spent a lot of money in obtaining them and keeping them in good shape.

But when the two bronze animal head sculptures will be auctioned at the price as high as $12 million each in February, we certainly have enough reason to believe that the seller is taking advantage of Chinese people's eagerness for their return to make unreasonable profit.

China Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Fund had contacted the agents of the collector before for their return, but the too high price of $10 million each asked for was both unreasonable and unacceptable.

We will not purchase things that belong to us, so said Song Xinchao, director of the museum department of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

This is the right stance we have on the issue of cultural relics lost overseas.

No matter in whatever means the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent acquired the two head sculptures, the fact that they were originally stolen from China will never be changed. Neither will the barbarous nature of the marauding at and destroying of the Old Summer Palace more than 140 years ago.

Those who had participated in the plundering and the very act of setting fire to the imperial palace more than 140 years ago owed Chinese people a heavy debt not only in real value of the properties they plundered and destroyed but in terms of morality and justice.

The collector in possession of the cultural relics stolen from the palace has added to that debt by refusing to return them to their original owner in a justified manner.

If they think otherwise, they certainly follow the gangster logic.

(China Daily 10/30/2008 page8)