Banned Christie’s Auction House from China and Hong Kong

By China Watcher

It is not enough to impose a tougher supervision on all items that the short-sighted auction house import and export from China.

China, with its thousand years of confirmed history, is one of the most important places where every auctioneer would source for ancient artifacts, but unfortunately Christie’s house can only see the businesses from a narrow perspective. It has boldly and daringly offended the Chinese government and its people by going ahead with the sale of the two sculptured items which was known to have been stolen by the imperialist forces of France and Britain during the 1860 Opium War.

The regret coming from Christie’s does not indicate that they are wrong in being an accessory to the sale of “stolen” items. Christie’s auction house claimed that the legal ownership was confirmed and they are directly and honestly engaged in legal trade. What a bunch of lies and nonsense just to justify its promotion of the looted items. Whoever purchase goods or items that are illegally acquired in the first place (from the original source – which was stolen) do not have ownership from the legal perspective.

China should ban Christie’s sale in China and Hong Kong and exert its political influence on Egypt or other cradles of civilization that are sited in Third World countries to ensure that Christie’s businesses in ancient items would be severely affected in the future.