The long road home for lost relics

Klaas Stutje, a senior researcher from the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in the Netherlands, cited his team's provenance work on the return to Indonesia of fossils of ancient human remains gathered by a Dutch collector. The work involved extensive field investigations and repeated cross-checking of residents' oral accounts.

"During provenance investigations, the visits, exchanges, training and seminars that grow out of them are good opportunities to build trust between the two sides. Even if the relics are not returned to their countries of origin immediately, it means the two sides have first established a relationship of trust, laying a foundation for future return," Stutje explained.

Regional dialogues on the repatriation of cultural property have been held in Central America, Africa and Europe, and this dialogue was one of the first of its kind held in the Asia-Pacific region.

Rao Quan, director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, said in a keynote speech at the forum that promoting the return of lost cultural relics has become a shared global mission. As one of the countries that have suffered from the most serious loss of cultural relics in history, China is also a supporter, participant and builder of international cooperation on the return and restitution of cultural property.

According to research by Duan Yong, director of the Center for Research on Chinese Cultural Relics Abroad at Shanghai University, a huge number of illegally lost cultural relics remain overseas. Citing his own research on China as an example, he said that public institutions and private collections overseas hold about 15 million cultural relics of Chinese origin, of which about 1.5 million were illegally taken.