Authorities bust relic smuggling in Shanxi

TAIYUAN－Police in northern China's Shanxi province have seized over 5,000 historical artifacts and arrested hundreds of people in a crackdown on tomb raiding and relic smuggling this year.

The operation, which began in March, has been the province's largest police operation of its kind. The police campaign has helped retrieve 5,730 historical artifacts, 33 of them under national-level cultural protection.

The number of suspects arrested and the number of relics retrieved both surpassed the totals between 2013 and 2017, the provincial Bureau of Public Security said.

"During the operation, police spared no efforts to track down the stolen relics," said Liu Xinyun, deputy governor of Shanxi and the provincial police chief.

Tomb raiding has been a serious problem in Shanxi, which is home to 452 cultural relics sites under state-level protection and more than 28,000 ancient architectural sites－the most in any provincial-level region.

A set of bronze bells dating back to the Shang Dynasty (c.16th century-11th century BC) had been smuggled and traded several times before police traced them back from a Hong Kong antique trader during their investigation.

Police said that once relics were smuggled abroad it became difficult to retrieve them, even after the smuggling was uncovered.

Wang Jingyan, a researcher with the Shanxi provincial archaeological institute, said that at an important cultural site in Xiangfen county, where there was a complex of tombs dating from the Western Zhou Dynasty (c.11th century-771 BC) to the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), nearly half of the 250 tombs had been robbed before an official excavation began.

"The tombs were mostly robbed and consequently damaged in 2013. It was heartbreaking for archaeologists," Wang said, adding that the provincial archaeological institute carried out an emergency rescue excavation to protect the remaining tombs in 2014.

The provincial museum held a three-month exhibition featuring 4,431 of the recovered cultural relics, mostly bronze ware from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. The exhibition closed in late August.

Police have arrested 543 suspects during the operation, busting a number of tom-braiding gangs.

Among them, a key member of a tomb-raiding gang was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, and four other principal members were jailed for life. In addition to tomb raiding and relic smuggling, the gang was also involved in drug trading and gambling.

Two former deputy police chiefs in Wenxi county, Yuncheng, were sentenced to life imprisonment in the same case for offering a "protective umbrella" for the gang's illegal business.