The Chinese government opposes auction of looted Chinese cultural relics, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said in Beijing on Saturday.

Such an auction is "adding salt to injury" and it is "immoral", he said, when asked to comment on Christie's sale of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) bronze rabbit and rat heads sculptures.

"The sculptures are cultural relics looted from China and China has the right to recover them," Yang said

The two bronze sculptures were looted from Yuanmingyuan, or the Old Summer Palace, by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.

China had tried repeatedly to dissuade Christie's from auctioning them. But the efforts failed.

(Xinhua News Agency March 7, 2009)