Antiquities in the People's Republic of China

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‘Stolen’ Chinese Art Causes Furor
By Michelle Dennehy, Auction Watch, 2 May 2000. Christie's, later indicted as a price-fixing cartel, offers the legal novelty that it is OK to sell stolen property as long as they had already been sold before. The history of theft of these treasures.
More looted relics to be auctioned off
The Straits Times, 11 October 2000. Christie's auction house is notorous for selling stolen national treasures. It boasts it can get away with it (brief).
Antiquated trade rules likely to ease as relic markets thrive
By Jasper Becker, South China Morning Post, 30 March 2001. In the face of globalization pressures, China considering the privatization of her people's cultural heritage. Antiquities markets.
$54m facelift for world's tallest Buddha statue
The Straits Times, 1 April 2001. 1,280-year-old statue in Leshan, a city in south-west China's Sichuan province, is world's highest Buddha statue, being 71 meters tall, more than the Bamiyan Valley statue in Afghanistan. Included in the World Cultural Heritage list, the statue has for years suffered damage from wind, water, acid rain and tramplings by visitors.
Cultural Bureau Proposes Giant National Museum
China News Digest, 28 May 2002. Proposal to build a huge national museum next to Tiananmen Square, which would almost triple the size of the 65,000 square meters of the Revolutionary and History museums. Beijing had lagged Shanghai and Xi'an in terms of museum quality.
Cultural Relics Face Submersion in Central China
Xinhua, 13 July 2002. The desperate need for water and the construction of a south-to-north water diversion project from the Yangtze. The central lines through Hubei Province would submerge relic sites in the Danjiangkou Reservoir area, where an ancient civilization was located.