The Research On Legal Methods About The Return Of China's Looted Relics

The cultural relics are the witnesses and carriers of a nation's history and culture, so it palys a very important role in the nation's self-esteem, self-improvement and sense of pride with no doubt. The looted relics including the cultural relics, which were robbed during war period and which were theft or smuggled in recent years. With the trades of cultural relics are brought into the public and more frequently than before, these trades attract the attention coming from all over the world.During more than 100 years in modern times of China, numberless cultural relics were robbed by foreign invaders, how to recover these precious cultural relics is a significant problem yet to be solved as soon as possible. The return of looted relics is very complex, because it is not only be related to the international conventions, but also come down to the articles of the domestic law. However, due to reasons such as the limitation of the applicability of the international conventions in time and space and the imperfection of relevant domestic laws, the great legal obstacles are still on the road of the return of looted relics overseas.This thesis hopes to give some rational analysis and advice in response to the specific difficulties and the obstacles in the legal system which encounters in the contemporary recourse for the looted relics. The main structure of this thesis can be devided into three parts:the first part of this thesis gives a general instruction of cultural relics, a brief description about the meaning of the return of the looted relics, the ownership theory about the looted relics and the legal practice in domestic and overseas; The main contents of the second part is the legal basis for the return of looted relics and the existing legal issues related to it, for instance, the limitations of three major international conventions and the boundedness of the provisions of domestic law is introduced in this part; The third part puts forward some suggestions to how to recover the looted relics from the two aspects of the international conventions and domestic law.In short, the Chinese government should use the diplomatic approach in company with the legal methods to strengthen the cooperation with international organizations and domestic and foreign non-governmental organizations. At the same time, China should amend the domestic legislation perfectly, enforce the law strictly, establish heritage list quickly and do the related research scrupulously to reach our goal on the return of looted relics. The author hopes that all the efforts in this thesis can make positive contribution to the return of the looted relics.