796 back home, 17 million overseas

ACCORDING TO AN AGREEMENT SIGNED BY CHINA AND ITALY on Saturday, a total of 796 Chinese cultural relics that were taken overseas, which cover a wide spectrum of Chinese history ranging from 5,000 years ago to the early decades of the last century, will be returned to China. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

This is the largest number of Chinese cultural relics to be returned from overseas since 1998, when the United Kingdom returned about 3,000 smuggled artifacts.

Yet 796 is rather small compared with 1.64 million, which is the total number of Chinese cultural relics displayed by over 200 museums overseas, located in 47 countries and regions.