China's Ironhanded Cultural Patrimony Request

Should every pre-1911 Chinese cultural object that's still in China stay in China?

That's essentially what the People's Republic of China is requesting, in its two-year-old call for the United States to impose import restrictions far more sweeping that any prior agreement forged by the U.S. under Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

Museum officials, dealers and collectors of Chinese material breathed a sigh of temporary relief at the news that the State Department had "agreed to delay a decision on [China's] controversial request" as reported in yesterday's NY Times

China's request would encompass virtually all types of cultural objects from prehistoric times through 1911. According to the State Department's summary of the request:

The People's Republic of China seeks import restrictions on categories of pillaged archaeological material from the Paleolithic Period to Qing Dynasty [ending in 1911] including, but not limited to:

---Metals: bronze, gold, and silver vessels, sculpture, utensils, jewelry, coins, weapons, and armor
---Ceramic: stoneware and porcelain vessels, sculpture, jewelry and architectural elements
---Stone: vessels, sculpture, weapons, utensils, jewelry, architectural elements
---Painting and calligraphy on wood, paper, silk, stone, fresco
---Textiles: silk clothing, hangings, furnishings
---Lacquer, bone, ivory and horn objects, including inscribed materials
---Wood and bamboo objects, including inscribed objects

By contrast, prior emergency actions and bilateral agreements that the U.S. government has forged under the UNESCO Convention have targeted very specific categories of archeological or ethnographical material.

Opponents of China's request point out that little has been done in that country to police the movement of its cultural property to Hong Kong, which, as described by New York dealer James Lally, is "an unrestricted exit point" for objects going abroad. They further note that the U.S. market for Chinese objects is dwarfed by the market in China itself and in other Asian countries. Why, they ask, is the U.S. being uniquely singled out for these restrictions?

In testimony last year before the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee, James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, observed that the broad range of cultural property subject to restriction under China's request would include "material...often made for the market and...circulated in the trade since at Han Dynasty more than 2000 years ago." Cuno concluded with this recommendation:

I propose that rather than requesting sweeping import restrictions, the Chinese government request protection only for those objects in danger of pillage and only on the condition that it establish and show evidence of encouraging collaborative excavations and the sharing of finds with U.S. teams and museums.

Such partage---"the sharing of finds"---can probably only be expressed as a wish, not a requirement. But the State Department's decision to give more time to this issue encourages hope that a compromise solution, such as Cuno's, is being seriously considered.