US hands over 64 smuggled artefacts to China in diplomatic push before leaders’ meeting

At the handover ceremony at the Chinese embassy in Washington on Wednesday, China received 58 pieces of cultural relics and palaeontological fossils from the Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities programme of US Homeland Security Investigations.

A further six items were returned a day later by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York.

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“The repatriation marks the latest step to implement the common understandings reached by the two presidents in their meetings in Beijing, and also demonstrates the broad prospects of building a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability,” said Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, at a briefing on Friday.

“China and the US should go in the same direction in the spirit of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit so as to accomplish more great and concrete things for the good of our two countries and peoples.”