China will take every possible step to protect its old and rare books and retrieve those scattered among other countries, an official document has said.

These books and documents, an indispensable part of Chinese history, lack proper preservation and management, says a State Council document posted on the government website yesterday.

The document also asks authorities to better protect such books by conducting a nationwide survey examining their numbers and conditions and improving the preservation environments and repair technology.

Smuggling of such books should be stopped, the document warns, emphasizing that "in accordance with international conventions and agreements, China will demand the return of the books taken out of the country illegally."

It's not clear how many old and rare books have been taken overseas, but a rough estimate shows over 3,000 of them, along with 2,000 pedigrees, are in the US.

Museums in Japan, Britain, and Ireland also have a large number of such books, including the remains of the world's earliest encyclopedia, the Great Encyclopedia of Yongle or Yongle Dadian.

In addition to books, foreign countries also have many Chinese paintings, sculptures, and scrolls of calligraphy. UNESCO figures show that about 1.63 million Chinese relics are scattered among 218 museums in 47 countries, which accounts for less than 10 percent of the world's total private collections of Chinese artifacts.

“Some of the relics have been returned through legal channels, but the majority were lost, particularly those looted by foreign invaders after the Opium War in 1840 and pieces smuggled out of tombs and museums,” the deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Fund for the Recovery of Overseas Relics, Niu Xianfeng, said.

"China has been trying consistently to get the looted and smuggled books and artifacts back, but the progress has been slow."

Since 1980, China has signed several international conventions and bilateral protocols with countries on the protection of cultural heritage, such as the Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, which entitles China to demand the return of the relics smuggled out of the country illegally.

The nation hopes to gain international cooperation by liaising with the International Criminal Police Organization and the World Customs Organization.

But these efforts have resulted in only a few successful cases. "The return of the relics demands a complete portfolio of the artifacts, including the evidence to show that it was smuggled out. And because of historical reasons, we often don't have such materials," Niu explained.

Foreign museums are also often unwilling to return the relics. In 2002, eighteen leading museums of the world, including the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, jointly declared they would not return any ancient artifacts to their countries of origin.

(China Daily January 31, 2007)