Chinese antiquities made to look cheap, then smuggled

Annually, millions of dollars worth of Chinese antiquities, jades, porcelain vases, paintings, depart China at an estimated value that is lower than their actual price.

The objects are then being resold in the US for at least twice their value as much as the declared import values.

The purpose traders have to devalue so much precious antique objects as to go around the very strict Chinese laws that are meant to restrict export of high-value cultural property.

Alice Lovell Rossiter, who between 2000 and 2012 tracked this opposition between declared value and selling price said that the gap extends to a total of nearly $1.4 billion.

‘Objects over 100 years of age are misclassified in order to avoid scrutiny by Chinese export officials, then reclassified properly when brought to the United States. Due to China’s rich cultural history and the vast amount of antiques and objects that accompany this history, China is considered one of the premiere ‘source’ countries in the world,’ said Rossiter, who researched this matter for her master’s thesis.

Rossiter extracted the data from the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database, finding not only such devaluation schemes but also other tactics to avoid paying the pricey high-art taxes or controls.

For example, traders often mislabel packages with alternate shipping codes, thus avoiding border controls. Also, the art purchased outside China is then shipped with a low value back into the country ‘because import tax on fine art is so high in China,’ stated Rossiter.