US Repatriates 58 Artifacts Including Buddha Sculptures To China

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The United States recently returned 58 cultural objects to China in a ceremony held at the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. This repatriation occurred last month, ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's three-day visit to the White House.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), announced the news on Wednesday. The following day, the Manhattan District Attorney's office returned an additional six bronze objects to China during a separate event in New York.

Details about the returned items, initially scarce, have since been released. The artifacts include two Buddha sculptures, terracotta horseman statues, and fossilized dinosaur bones and eggs. A notable piece among them is a complete skeleton of a Psittacosaurus, described as a small, plant-eating dinosaur with a distinctive beak. One of the Buddha statues was stolen more than a century ago from the Tianlongshan Grottoes, a temple complex located in Shanxi Province.

Nine different HSI offices collaborated with the FBI, the U.S. State Department, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on these investigations. Their objective is to disrupt the black-market trade in ancient antiquities, which ICE states often finances criminal activities.

According to the South China Morning Post, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun commented at the ceremony that“China and the US should go in the same direction in the spirit of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit so as to accomplish more great and concrete things for the good of our two countries and peoples.”

Source: ARTnews

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