Rules sought to stop artworks smuggling

BEIJING - China's cultural relic watchdog has vowed to strengthen regulations to combat online smuggling, Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.

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"Without effective regulation, the current chaos in the online trading of artworks and antiques will pose severe dangers to the cultural heritage of China," Xinhua quoted Shan Jixiang, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and a member of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

Other CPPCC members also appealed for legislation that would regulate online arts trading, which currently takes place under no restrictions.

Shan said the cultural heritage administration has been investigating websites that trade in such wares and will draw up documents that lay out prohibitions on smuggling.

China has around 200 websites that trade in arts and cultural relics. Only a few have operation certificates granted by the cultural heritage authority.

The latest statistics released by the administration show the websites sold 1 million artworks in the past year and had a trading volume of 1 billion yuan ($152 million). The items included many cultural relics that cannot be traded under the law.

China now classifies artworks produced in or before the year 1911 as cultural heritage artifacts and prohibits their transfer outside the country.

Laws also stipulate that stores and auction houses dealing in cultural relics may not sell such wares without the approval of authorities and that cultural relics may not be sold to foreigners without permission.

But Lu Qin, a CPPCC member, said online trading is not likely to be placed under the supervision of the cultural relic departments, largely because such commerce is often conducted anonymously.

"Cultural relics are smuggled on the Internet in a way that is similar to the way that other online purchases are made," Tang Hongxin, a Beijing-based lawyer specializing in criminal cases at Yingke Law Firm, told China Daily on Thursday.

To hawk artworks and antiques on the Internet, sellers need only take a few steps to evade the regulations. Many first register on an e-commerce website such aseBay and then tell Chinese customs officials that they are selling handicrafts. After that, they often make sure that any money they receive is transferred from abroad through the Internet.

"To make things worse, staff members at customs hardly have the knowledge needed to make an appraisal of a cultural relic, which leaves loopholes for smugglers and leads to an easy traffic in such items," Tang said.

China, despite its prohibitions, has seen about 17 million artworks taken abroad, the Xinhua report said.