Oriental Heritage Inc., has announced a 7 day Antiques Buying Event in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Area. A prominent advertisement in the Washington Post exclaims, �The Chinese economy is booming. As a result, the market for Chinese antiques is red hot. Prices for many Chinese antiques have grown dramatically.� The advertisement also informs us that the Oriental Heritage Inc. is �backed up by major investment groups in China� and �has access to tens of millions of dollars of funds instantly.� Although not explicitly stated in the advertisement itself, the implication is that any art purchased in the United States will be repatriated to China.
Comment: While I support Oriental Heritage�s rights to purchase antiques in the United States and send them to China, its actions again underscore the utter foolishness of the State Department Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Cultural Heritage Center�s effort to secure US import restrictions on Chinese cultural goods. Those restrictions have been pitched by State Department cultural bureaucrats and supportive archaeologists as necessary to protect Chinese archaeological sites. Yet, they appear to have in fact done little more than help redirect the trade in Chinese art back to China itself.
For more about Oriental Heritage, see http://orientalheritageinc.com/