In 2012, a porcelain sculpture and jade bowl worth at least £3 million was taken from the Oriental Museum at Durham University. Then, thieves snatched 18 objects including Chinese jades from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The following year, KODE museum was targeted once again with Chinese art seized. In 2015, display cases were shattered and Oriental art grabbed at the Chinese Museum in the Chateau de Fontainebleau in Paris. There was no doubt that thieves knew exactly what they were after because they completely ignored the 1,500 other rooms in the chateau. Their haul included works looted by French soldiers who had sacked the Beijing’s Old Summer Palace in 1860. A similarity connecting the heists is that most of the stolen art has never resurfaced, raising the likelihood that it being held in a private collection. Chinese billionaires recently outnumbered their American counterparts. Many of them have taken up art collecting, with a particular interest in antiquities from their own country forcing up prices on both the open and black market.
Chinese artefacts are reportedly being stolen to order from Beijing galleries and museums and are ending up in private collections. Burglaries specifically targeting Chinese antiquities have been attributed to Chinese collectors attempting to reclaim cultural artefacts which were looted by Western invading armies during the 19th century. James Ratcliffe, director of recoveries and general counsel at the Art Loss Register, said there had been “a spate of thefts of Chinese artefacts” over the past decade. None of the stolen items have reappeared, suggesting they are in private hands.