China will take every possible step to preserve its old and rare books and retrieve those scattered overseas, an official document has said.

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

The document asks authorities to better protect such books by conducting a nationwide survey on their numbers and condition and improving the preservation environment and repair technology.

Smuggling of such books should be stopped, the document says, 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 are lying 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.

Besides books, foreign countries also have many Chinese paintings, calligraphies and sculptures. UNESCO figures show that about 1.63 million pieces of Chinese relics are scattered in 218 museums of 47 countries, and that account for less than 10 percent of the world's total private collections of Chinese relics.

Some of the relics were brought back through legal channels, but the majority got lost, especially 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, relics and artefacts 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 smuggled out relics.

The country has been seeking international cooperation by liaising with the International Criminal Police Organization and the World Customs Organization, too.

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

Foreign museums, too, are unwilling to return the relics. In 2002, 18 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 ancient artifacts to their countries of origin.

Source: China Daily