The National Palace Museum, holder of the world’s largest collection of Chinese artifacts, plans to hold an exhibition in the UK and Japan, the museum said yesterday.
“We are negotiating with the British Museum for an exchange of exhibitions — we will hold an exhibition of Chinese treasures at the British Museum and they will display their collection of Greek sculptures at the National Palace Museum,” a museum press officer said.
“The negotiations are ongoing. We don’t know when the exhibitions can be held, because even after we have reached an agreement, we have to wait till both museums have the space to hold the exhibitions,” she said, asking not to be named.
The museum is also seeking to hold an exhibition in Japan.
“Many Japanese museums have invited us to hold an exhibition in Japan, but the obstacle is that Japan does not have the Law of Guaranteed Return, which ensures that after the exhibition, our exhibits will be returned to Taiwan and not be seized by China,” she said.
“We hope Japan can either enact the Law of the Guaranteed Return or issue a statement, with legal effect, to pledge that our exhibits will be returned to Taiwan after the exhibition,” the press officer said.
Some 2.6 million Taiwanese and foreigners visit the National Palace Museum each year. Half are Japanese, who are often particularly interested in Chinese calligraphy.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government took the best artifacts from the Palace Museum in Beijing and a museum in Nanjing — a total of 650,000 pieces — and brought them to Taipei when it lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949.
Since then, the artifacts have been preserved at the National Palace Museum and are put on display by rotation.
China considers the artworks the heritage of China, and fearing that Beijing might impound the artifacts through its diplomatic ties with other countries, Taiwan has allowed the National Palace Museum to send its treasures abroad on only a few occasions.
In February, the museum held an exhibition in Austria following two years of negotiations to convince Vienna to sign the Law of Guaranteed Return.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods