Now even though the supply end of the market is less organized, more individuals are involved, Cheng said.
"In the countryside the local people are more conscious of the commercial value of these things, that's a big change," he said. "This change in the last 10 years has increased the local people's involvement in digging up and stealing these objects."
And in a recent twist in the market trend an increasing number of buyers from mainland China are crossing the border to buy antiques smuggled from the nation's hinterland provinces, which they take back to China as legitimate purchases.
"The big buyers are from mainland China," Sally Chu said. "When they buy from Hong Kong, the pieces have certificates," she said, explaining the advantage of purchasing at a premium in a market where "people are entitled to buy whatever is available legally."
The buyers from China range from private collectors to public museum curators, Cheng said.
"You can not sell in China, because it is illegal. However, there is no law against the sale of whatever objects are already in Hong Kong," he said.
Some collectors express concern that the ready availability of smuggled antiques in Hong Kong makes the market here an easy target for money laundering. With certificates of authenticity provided by Hong Kong dealers, the goods can be legitimately sold on to the international markets of New York, Paris or London, or passed on to customers and acquaintances in China as corporate gifts.
"Many private collectors bring cash, It's a way to launder money," said one Hollywood Road dealer who did not want to be named.
For City University's Cheng, the real issue is the destruction of history.
"If you just think they are beautiful, that's one thing," he said of China's historic treasure trove of artefacts and art works. "But where they are buried or stored in historical layers they can show their cultural meaning. That's what's being destroyed and that's terrible."
Chinese themselves waged wholesale war on their own cultural heritage during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s, as frenzied youths directed by Mao Zedong (毛澤東) set about trying to wipe out the "four olds" -- old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas.
But Cheng says the Red Guards' targets were above ground.
"Now what's happening is underground," he said. "For historical and cultural relics above ground you usually have records. But what's happening now is that they are destroying things underground, where things should be discovered in their right place, by the right people. Now we have a problem in understanding. That's the real problem. It's as bad as the Cultural Revolution."
But Cheng said that under present circumstances there is little besides education that can be done to change the trend.
"It's one-country two-systems, and it's legal, so they can really sell," Cheng said, referring to the political and economic system under which Hong Kong has functioned since 1997 as an "special economic zone" of China.
"We are living in a capitalist world. We are living in this environment of profit-making and this is legal, so you cannot stop it," he said.
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