The looting of art and cultural treasures over the centuries, by explorers, archeologists, soldiers and thieves, has become something of a cause celebre in museums around the world in recent decades.
Think of the outcry over the Elgin marbles in London, the Pergamon gates and Nefertiti’s bust in Berlin. Anyone who visits Angkor Wat should think about all those hacked-off friezes and Buddha heads.
The National Palace Museum is currently promoting a special exhibition of Tibetan Buddhist treasures that opens on July 1. The museum boasts that the show will include 130 artifacts from China, dating from the 5th to the 20th century, including many “lent” by the Potala and Norbulingka palaces in Lhasa and important Tibetan monasteries such as Sakya, Palcho and Tashilhunpo.
A senior museum official said the exhibit will “display the superiority of Tibetan art.” The museum Web site says: “No doubt Buddhism has become the flesh and blood of Tibetan culture,” adding that it hopes the exhibition will “bring about a better understanding of Tibetan history and culture.”
Left unsaid in the promotional materials is that most of the buildings at Sakya were razed during China’s Cultural Revolution, while Palcho was partially destroyed during the 1959 uprising against Chinese rule. Tashilhunpo lost two-thirds of its buildings at the hands of the Red Guards, although as the seat of the Panchen Lama it fared better than most.
Will there be any mention of the other monasteries that were demolished — like the great university at Ganden — the hundreds of thousands of scriptures that were burned, the monks and nuns that were killed, imprisoned or forced out of their orders — or of the repression of religion that continues in Tibet and Tibetan areas today?
The Beijing government and Chinese nationalists complain loudly about the looting and burning of the Summer Palace by British and French troops in October 1860 and the subsequent dispersal of its treasures around the world. An attempt to auction two bronze animal heads from the palace early last year was thwarted by “patriotic” Cai Mingchao (蔡銘超), who made the winning bid and then announced he had no intention of paying because they should be returned to China for free. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu (姜瑜) earlier made the usual noises about how “auctioning cultural objects looted in war time … offends the Chinese people and undermines their cultural rights.”
The silence from Beijing, however, is deafening when it comes to the destruction of cultural treasures and family heirlooms during the Chinese Communist Party’s march to power and the Cultural Revolution.
Promoting a show of Buddhist treasures from Tibetan monestaries is not like exhibiting the jade burial suit of Prince Liu Sheng (劉勝) unearthed in Sichuan or a terracotta warrior or two from Xian or the Beauty of Loulan from Xinjiang.
Beijing’s systematic efforts to crush the culture and religion of Tibet cannot and should not be ignored. The “Sacred Land Tibet — Treasures from the Roof of the World” show should not be seen as a celebration of an ancient culture and religion. It is a display of trophies from a government that has tried to eradicate the culture it purports to be presenting. It is akin to an exhibition of Torah, menorah and other items from sacked synagogues and Jewish homes organized by the Third Reich.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS