QINGDAO -- Over 150 officials, scholars, and representatives from countries including Thailand, Honduras and Syria gathered in east China's Shandong Province to explore ways to protect and restore cultural relics.

Countries and organizations called for closer cooperation in the protection and return of cultural relics, at a seminar in Qingdao City. Global experts said it is important to understand the cultural rights of different peoples, and correct the injustice of colonial plunder, as well as that through other illicit means.

"I'm delighted that this conference has been able to have such a positive outcome. I think this is now an even better and clearer platform based on which future work in this area can continue to proceed," said Lothar Von Falkenhausen, professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at the University of California in Los Angeles.

China is one of the countries that suffered severe loss of cultural relics due to looting, smuggling, and illicit trade.
Official data showed over 10 million Chinese artifacts have been displaced overseas since the Opium War in 1840.
At the seminar, the University of Chicago handed over new evidence of the removal of the oldest Chinese manuscripts on silk found to date. They were illicitly excavated and taken to the U.S. in the 1940s.

"Our library archive had a very important item, which was the box cover, in which the silk manuscripts physically were placed when they were taken from China. The box cover returning to China would be an important symbol of the goal of returning the original manuscripts to China," said Donald Harper, professor of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Repatriation of cultural relics cannot be achieved overnight. Participants said they look forward to deepening cooperation and exchanges in the future, and hopefully returning the lost artifacts to their rightful places of origin through concerted efforts.