Return of Old Summer Palace statues seen as Kering group PR exercise

In 2009, Christie’s auction house ignored protests from Beijing and put on the block two bronze statues looted by Anglo-French forces during the opium wars.

But the Paris auction of the rat and rabbit statues did not go off as planned. The Chinese businessman who made the highest bid refused to deliver the ¤2.8 million (HK$28.3 million) he pledged. It was a “patriotic act”, he said.

On Friday, the heads were finally handed over to the National Museum in Beijing in a ceremony attended by Li Xiaojie, the director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

Li praised their return as “a friendly message to the Chinese people and a support for China’s cultural relics protection”, according to China’s official Xinhua.

Reclaiming the bronze animal heads, which part of a set of 12 that sat around the fountain at the Old Summer Palace, has been a national priority.

The looting and burning of the palace in 1860 has long symbolised the beginning of China’s long humiliation at the hands of the West.

The return of the statues has, however, been meant with little of the chest-thumping which usually accompanies the retrieval of lost cultural relics on the mainland.