In a bid to encourage overseas collectors to return to China its ancient relics, the country plans to offer "reasonable compensation" in exchange for the antiques, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) has said.

Shan Jixiang, director of SACH, the country's leading authority on cultural relics preservation, made the announcement on Monday minutes after Chinese-American collector George Fan and his wife Katherine Hu donated nine bronze relics, dating back more than 2,500 years, to a Chinese museum.

Fan was also awarded the first prize for international cultural exchange, initiated by the Ministry of Culture in 1996, for his "generous donations to Chinese museums over the years".

Fan, 73, and his wife, who are based in New York, have a private collection of more than 100 pieces of ancient Chinese relics, even after they, along with Fan's father Hu Huichun, have donated about 100 such antiques to museums in China, especially the Shanghai Museum, since the 1950s.

Of the nine bronzes they donated on Monday, three belong to the late Western Zhou period (c. 11th century-771 BC) tomb of the Jin Marquise in Shanxi province.

The other six were excavated from the tomb of the duke of the Qin State during the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BC) in Gansu province.

Both tombs were looted in the early 1990s, with their antiquities, mostly bronzes, smuggled overseas. Fan purchased nine of them at auctions.

"As bronzes play an important role in the study of Chinese culture and heritage, Fan's generous donations have helped put together important pieces of puzzles of our history, archeology and chronology," Shan said.

Owing to wars and rampant smuggling of antiques between the 1860s and 1949, foreign museums own some "1.64 million relics that originally belong to China", said Shan, adding that it was impossible to count those in the hands of private collectors across the world.

SACH reiterated its objection to both auctions and purchases of Chinese cultural relics exported illegally.

Song Xinchao, director of the SACH museum department, said China was in favor of retrieving its looted relics through "legal or diplomatic means".

SACH archives show that since 1998, China has managed to retrieve nearly 4,000 antiques through donations, purchases by overseas Chinese, and legal and diplomatic means.

"Bringing back home stolen or looted relics from foreign soil is a common wish that the Chinese at home and abroad share," Shan said.

"We hope more and more overseas Chinese join the cause of getting the country's looted relics back home."

(China Daily November 25, 2009)