Taipei - Taiwan might accept two imperial Chinese sculptures owned by the late French fashion magnate Yves Saint Laurent and pursued by China, officials said Wednesday. The two bronze heads - a rat and a rabbit - were looted 150 years ago when French and British troops attacked China during the Opium Wars in 1860. They became the subject of a heated argument in a parliament session Wednesday after National Palace Museum director Chou Kung-shin ruled out accepting the objects offered by a French collector.
"These items were looted, and it goes against our regulations to collect objects still in dispute," Chou told parliament
Under pressure from both ruling and opposition lawmakers, Premier Wu Den-yih later asked Chou to reconsider her decision.
"There should be a review of the entire matter, whether the bronze heads were obtained by illegal means, whether the ruling by the French judicial authorities that they were not seized objects was finalized and whether the current collector really wanted to give them or sell them to Taiwan," Wu said.
His statement came after lawmakers criticized Chou and the China-friendly government of President Ma Ying-jeou for lacking the "spine" to accept the objects for fear of provoking Beijing.
"The museum has no spine," said Lee Ching-hua of the ruling Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, in a parliament session. "He [the collector] already said he wanted to give you the relics, and you didn't even dare accept them."
Lee's colleague in the opposition Democratic Progressive Party Huang Wei-che questioned the premier over Chou's position, asking, "Does that mean the government is afraid of angering China?"
Kuomintang lawmaker Lu Hsueh-chang said if the Palace Museum in Taipei did not want the objects, it could always give them to other museums in Taiwan.
Huang Yung-chuan, director of the National Museum of History, another major Taiwan museum, said his institution was "very willing to accept" the objects and has even reserved a special room to display them.
The two bronzes had been sold for a total of more than 15 million euros (22 million dollars) in a February auction despite repeated protests by China, which demanded their return. A Chinese collector later deliberately dropped out after winning the bidding to try to abort the auction of the pieces.
Pierre Berge, Laurent's partner, told French media recently that he offered to give the controversial objects to a "Taiwan museum" after the French government rejected them, but the museum, also like the French government, refused them for fear of angering China.
Meanwhile, the Palace Museums in Taiwan and China on Wednesday started a three-month joint exhibition in Taipei of artefacts from the reign of Qing Emperor Yongzheng in the mid-18th century.
The exhibition, the first between the former political rivals in 60 years, features 246 masterpieces, including 37 from the Beijing museum and two from a Shanghai museum. The show is to last until January 10.
