Wary Taiwan museum withholds treasures from China

[Coventina]

Source: Reuters

TAOYUAN, Taiwan (Reuters) - A Taiwan museum will not lend any of its art treasures to China, from where they were originally taken, despite a goodwill loan of similar artefacts from Beijing, museum officials said on Thursday.

Taipei's National Palace Museum contains 650,000 pieces of Chinese art, much of which was taken to Taiwan from the Forbidden City in Beijing when Nationalist forces fled the mainland at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

The Forbidden City, which has 600,000 not-so-spectacular pieces which were left behind, said this week it would lend Taipei 29 Qing Dynasty pieces, a sign of a broader thaw in relations between the two sides.

Directors for the two museums reached nine agreements covering future exchanges this week in Beijing but no deal on loaning relics to China, Taipei museum Director Chou Kung-shin told a news conference.



Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE51I1VQ20090219

[wickerwoman]

1. Assholes.

This is even less justifiable than the British Museum holding on to the Elgin marbles.

The KMT has absolutely no excuse for holding on to six thousand years worth of priceless treasures which they stole when they fled to Taiwan less than fifty years ago.