Beijing working to reclaim relics

In addition to businesspeople buying traditional Chinese works for themselves, the government and community groups are working to reclaim valued pieces.

Since the 1990s, the government has used intergovernmental treaties and customs regulations to reclaim about 3,000 traditional works spirited out of the country.

In 2002, China's Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Programme was launched - with the support of China's eight official 'democratic' parties - to recover cultural relics from overseas collections through international conventions, by buying them or by asking for them as donations.

The programme's director, Zhang Yongnian , said there were many hurdles to retrieving lost Chinese relics.

'The present holders are not the looters of the past,' Mr Zhang said. 'It also depends on the attitude of other countries.'

The curators of 18 museums in Europe and the United States, including those at the Louvre in Paris and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, issued a joint statement in 2002 opposing the return of historical art works to their original owners.