THE State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) is highly concerned with the chaotic cultural relics market in China, an SACH official said last week, vowing to intensify supervision and management.

    Li Yaoshen, head of SACH’s policy and regulation bureau, noted that some auction groups commonly take advantage of laws and regulations to lure buyers to drive up prices, even while knowing certain auction items are fake.

    The country’s current Auction Law stipulates that auction groups and clients cannot be held responsible for an item’s poor or counterfeit quality if they claim beforehand that the quality and authenticity of the item cannot be ensured.

    Meanwhile, Li noted that some relic sellers do not have business certificates and use various illegal or loophole-abusing strategies in market trading.

    A recent case involved a set of jade furniture — a dresser and a stool — that sellers claimed dated to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220).

    After being sold at auction for 220 million yuan (US$34.87 million) last year, an Internet user wrote a post alleging the jade wares were counterfeit and made by a craftsman surnamed Zhao in Jiangsu Province, with a true value of about 500,000 yuan.

    Although Zhao admitted that he was the maker of the jade furniture in a later interview with Xinhua, the expert who authenticated the objects denied that the so-called “antiques” were fake.

    Li said the administration will set up a system to manage and regulate authentication certificates for cultural relics, and will adopt stricter approval procedures for relic auctions by spelling out more concrete and specific requirements for the introduction of auction items and the responsibilities of auction professionals.

    China overtook the United States as the world’s biggest market for art and antiques last year, according to the European Fine Art Foundation’s recently published 2011 art market report.

    China’s share of the global art market rose from 23 percent in 2010 to 30 percent last year, pushing the United States to second place with a share of 29 percent, the report said.

(Xinhua)