Washington and Beijing are preparing for a meeting of the leaders. On the eve of Xi Jinping's visit to the US capital, the American side handed over 64 cultural relics and paleontological fossils to China.
The ceremonies took place on 16 and 17 September at the PRC embassy in Washington and in New York. 58 items were returned by the Homeland Security Investigations unit, and another six by the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
Among the returned treasures are the torso of a bodhisattva statue from the Tianlongshan Grottoes in Shanxi Province, other statues, terracotta figures, as well as dinosaur skeletons, fish fossils and dinosaur eggs. Many of them had been seized from smugglers by American law enforcement officers.
Chinese officials called the handover another step in implementing the agreements reached by Xi Jinping and Donald Trump during their May meeting in Beijing. According to them, it demonstrates the possibilities of constructive cooperation between the two countries.
The cooperation rests on an intergovernmental memorandum of 2009, which has been repeatedly extended. Over the years the document has been in force, more than 700 items have already been returned to China in more than 20 batches.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stressed: the repatriation shows "broad prospects for building constructive China-US relations of strategic stability." He called on both sides to move in the same direction in the spirit of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit.
China's Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng and Vice Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan also noted that the return of the artifacts is a visible result of implementing the leaders' consensus and promotes humanitarian exchanges between the peoples.
What impetus will this gesture give to the upcoming high-level talks? One thing is clear for now: in a difficult period of bilateral relations, such steps emphasize that even in the sphere of cultural heritage, concrete, mutually beneficial interaction is possible.
