US returns groups of cultural relics to China

China's National Cultural Heritage Administration (NCHA) received two batches – totaling 64 items – of cultural relics and artifacts, and paleontological fossils from the US on September 16 and 18, Beijing Time. The two batches were respectively handed over by US Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, DC, and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in New York.

The returned items, seized by US law enforcement agencies, include the torso of a bodhisattva statue from the Tianlongshan Grottoes in China's Shanxi Province, as well as statues, terracotta figures, dinosaur skeleton fossils, fish fossils and dinosaur egg fossils.

The NCHA said that it worked with Chinese diplomatic and consular missions in the United States and relevant US authorities to facilitate the return of the artifacts and that this week's return marked the fifth time the Manhattan District Attorney's Office had returned cultural relics to China.

China and the US signed a memorandum of understanding in January 2009 aimed at preventing the illegal import of Chinese cultural relics into the US, which has since been extended three times.