Research On The Problem Of The Loss And Restitution Of Chinese Cultural Relics

China is a country with a long history. Within its 5000 years history, the industrious and intelligent people created incredible civilization and left a lot of cultural relics for us. However, cultural properties of many countries have been lost overseas because of incomplete conventions and civil laws. Especially for China, because of war booty, stealing, smuggling, illicit trade and so on, a mass of national treasures lost all over the world now. Along with the reform opening-up, economic growth in China has been rapid in recent years, and the living standard also has been improved. China began to pay attention to the spiritual civilization construction, on the base of some success of material civilization achieved. As we can see in the strong protection of the cultural heritage and the concern on the China's return of cultural relics lost overseas.Under this research background, the dissertation does the research on the problems of the loss and restitution of Chinese cultural relics. It figures out what is lost cultural relics and what is returned cultural relics, also the historic backgroud, the amount, and the distribution of the lost cultural relics. Then it discusses the different approaches to destitute lost cultural relics according to the different lost background. Finally it explores the related problems that involved when we try to restitute the illegally lost cultural relics.The dissertation is divided into five parts:The first chapter is the introduction. It primarily analyses related problem on the loss and recovery of Chinese cultural relics that were researched by former scholars, and then briefly introduces the purpose, significance and method of this paper and the problems planned to solve.The second chapter is the definition of "lost cultural relics" and "returned cultural relics". It refers to some correlative concepts in this paper, and then attempts to give the definition about what are "lost cultural relics" and "returned cultural relics".The third chapter is the lost approaches of cultural relics and the status quo of the lost cultural relics. It discusses the historic inevitability of the loss of cultural relics in that period and then introduces how the Chinese cultural relics lost overseas after the opium war, the amount and the distribution of the lost cultural relics.The forth chapter focus on the related problems that involved in restituting the lost cultural relics. Firstly, it briefly introduces the returned channels of the lost cultural relics and the historic background of the international return of cultural property. Secondly, aim at one of the returned method which our country advocated most, namely restitution, it discusses the historic courses of the international protection of cultural property and then compares and analyses three international conventions through which we can restitute the illegally lost cultural relics and the two conflicting legal theories struggling behind them. Also it analyses the obstacles and legal issues that China may encounter when restituting the cultural relics overseas. Thirdly, it discusses the chauvinism of the marketing country and problems of illicit international trade of cultural property that occurred when instituting the lost cultural relics. Lastly, it analyses some successful cases of the restitution of lost cultural property and try to put forth some constructive countermeasures to our country's, and then looks forward the future of the restitution of lost cultural relics.The fifth chapter is the epilogue. It briefly reviews and summarizes the contents of the dissertation and then tries to offer some opinions for the future research work.