The China Cultural Relics Recovery Program, funded by the China Foundation for the Development of Folklore Culture, announced a new project on Monday to claim back China's national treasures from around the world.

"The spiritual wealth can be shared, but not the ownership," said Xie Chensheng, a senior cultural heritage preservation expert, "That should lie with the Chinese people."

Zhang Yongnian, head of the program, said the group will focus on items that were stolen, excavated or looted and trafficked abroad between 1840 and 1949, before the founding of the People's Republic of China.

According to UNESCO, about 1.67 million Chinese artifacts are housed overseas by more than 200 museums in 47 countries.

Some estimates put the number of relics collected by private individuals at 10 times that figure.

But the director-general of the program, Wang Weiming, was keen to stress there would be no indiscriminate witch-hunt: "We don't mean to retrieve all Chinese relics stored in foreign museums."

He said the program is a civil movement fueled by NGOs and based on public opinion, historical realities and an international convention to protect cultural relics at their original sites.

Curbing the export of cultural relics has found consensus amongst many governments, experts said.

"We will compile a list of relics that we want returned," Wang said, "The first will be a recognized artistic treasure."

Artifacts returned from overseas account for more than 50% of lots at domestic auctions, and 60% of total auction deals. By January 2005, nearly 40,000 returned cultural relics had been auctioned to Chinese buyers.

(China Daily April 13, 2005)