Strong as China, Fragile as Porcelain

By Antoaneta Becker Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Becker

LONDON, Nov 24 2010 (IPS) - In times of inflationary pressures the price of patriotism too goes up. The news that an 18th century Chinese porcelain vase sold for a record-breaking 68 million dollars at a London auction to a mainland China buyer this month did not go down well either with Chinese government regulators fretting about asset bubbles or with a Chinese public angry about income inequality.

Speculation that the delicate vase may have been among the treasures looted by British troops when they sacked the imperial palaces in Beijing during the second Opium War from 1856 to 1860, did not stem a flow of criticism on Internet forums and in the usually more restrained official media.

“These relics were smuggled, stolen or looted in wars,” Li Jianmin, archaeology expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told people.com.cn. “If we offer huge sums of money to buy them back, it is legalising these illegal activities.”

A “second pillage” is how the Peoples’ Daily online described the auction that took place at Bainbridge’s, a relatively small London auction house where the vase dated from the period of the emperor Qianlong went under the hammer.

Outraged that some British media have cast a sarcastic eye on China’s “porcelain patriotism”, netizens and cultural commentators have been virulent in their attacks.

Buying back looted relics with money will be of no help teaching the British “to bear their shameful act in mind,” said the Peoples’ Daily opinion signed by Yan Meng. “Instead, this will make the British more and more intoxicated in their barbaric and singular enjoyment from money.”

The bidders, nearly all said to be Chinese, and the final mainland buyer, were all subjected to character assassination.

“Pawns in a game of gambling and ostentatious display of wealth,” said the Beijing News. “A gang of wealthy Chinese collectors with dubious motives,” said the Nanfang Daily online.

Some have pointed out that the money could have paid the basic healthcare cover for 25 million poor Chinese peasants.

In the past Chinese tycoons who purchased stolen antiquities and returned them to China were described as dutiful patriotic sons and daughters. Chinese experts hold that over 10 million Chinese relics were taken illegally out of the country before the communist revolution in 1949.

Nursing a national scar from what it calls the “100 years of humiliation” the country suffered at foreign hands, Chinese leaders have encouraged the return of lost national treasures through private capital. They have also nurtured the rise of domestic antique buyers in the hope that local prices might come to match those in New York and London.

But a recent boom in Chinese antiques sales and the record prices paid for them have regulators concerned about the creation of yet another bubble. On the same day that the Qianlong vase was auctioned off, a Beijing collector reportedly paid 4.3 million dollars for a seal that belonged to the Qianlong emperor at a Bonham’s Sale of Fine Chinese Art in London.

With stock markets falling rapidly and overheating property sectors in main cities, investing in art and antiquities has become an increasingly appealing alternative. China’s nouveau riche are flush with cash and eager to diversify out of China’s inflated asset bubble.

They have taken to auctions far more eagerly than anticipated, pushing up prices for art and artefacts both at home and abroad. The price of the vase sold by Bainbridge’s exceeded a record for Chinese antiquities set just last month in Hong Kong when another Qianlong vase sold for 34 million dollars.

Regulators are concerned such buying masks problems in the broader Chinese economy. Banks are swimming in deposits and continuing to lend vigorously to sustain economic growth and employment rates. Beijing is now taking no chances that creeping inflation may disappear by itself. Rising food prices and swelling public discontent have the Chinese leaders fixed on protecting the most vulnerable.

Consumer prices rose only 4.4 percent in October, but Beijing has declared a war on speculators and hoarders.

In the current economic climate the sale of a 16-inch vase dusted out of a London attic for 68 million dollars sends the wrong signal. In the bidding frenzy that reportedly stunned even the auction organisers, the Chinese bidders were said to have raised their bidding prices each time by not less than a million.

“This has nothing to do with patriotic feelings,” says university lecturer Yan Nong. “It is a contest of wealth and a very ostentatious one.”