CCTV News: In the early morning of March 4, Beijing time, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage received 41 cultural relics and artworks in the Office of the Prosecutor of Manhattan District, New York, USA. This batch of cultural relics and artworks include: copper money trees and pottery seats, plain-faced pottery cauldrons, plain-faced copper syrups, pottery rap figurines and other pottery, jade, bronze ware, Buddha statues, portrait bricks and Tibetan Buddhist cultural relics.
After experts conduct preliminary picture appraisal and legal judgment, the batch of cultural relics and artworks spans from the Neolithic Age to the Qing Dynasty, with rich categories and exquisite craftsmanship, and certain historical, artistic and scientific value. It is an illegal Chinese cultural relics and artwork.
In 2009, China and the United States signed the first intergovernmental memorandum of understanding to prevent the illegal entry of Chinese cultural relics into the United States, and it was a bilateral agreement for more than 250 years of historical artworks; since then, the agreement was renewed three times in 2014, 2019 and 2024 respectively. So far, China and the United States have cooperated to return 20 batches of 594 sets of cultural relics and artworks lost to the United States.
