Reserch On Recovering China's Lost Cultural Relics Under International Law

As one of the world's oldest culture nations, China has innumerable cultural treasures, however, because of wars, unfair trade, incomplete cultural relics preservation law in and nonstandard action rules, enormous amount of cultural relics had been illegally removed. This thesis firstly presents the current satiation and categories of nation's lost cultural relics as well as the reasons for why such invaluable cultural treasures are got lost, and then introduces the measures to recover these cultural relics including international litigation, using international convention, diplomatism, purchasing in the market and donation. Secondly, the thesis focuses on the three important international conventions: 1954 Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its Protocols,1970 Convention on the means of prohibiting and preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of ownership of cultural property(1970 UNSECO Convention),1995 Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects(1995 UNIDROIT Convention), which have disadvantages such as conventions having no retroactive effect,limited sanction, limited applied bound, unclear regulations on good-faith purchaser's compensation, lack of remedy. Thirdly, on the base of the comparing the different measures in characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of recovering the lost cultural relics, the thesis takes the ancient Chinese Yuanmingyuan relics as an example to discuss the law circumstance home and abroad, and points out that the pragmatic means to recover those relics are making effective use of international conventions, consultation and cooperation as well as consummating nation's cultural relics preservation laws.