| 作者 |
 我个人觉得这事法方做的 very insensitive if not sheer stupid. 福布斯报道说， |
 |
ceo/cfo
[博客]
[个人文集]
头衔: 海归中将
声望: 院士
性别: 
加入时间: 2004/11/05
文章: 12941
海归分: 491638
|
|
|
作者：ceo/cfo 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
Auction Mystery Revealed
Gady Epstein, 03.02.09, 07:39 AM EST
A Chinese collector announces he won the bidding for imperial bronze animal heads but will not pay up in protest.
stunning $40 million sale of two Qing Dynasty bronze animal heads that China vehemently opposed auctioning last week left many wondering about the mystery buyer: Was this someone who really loved China or someone who really hated China?
Now we have our answer. In an audacious display of nationalist fervor, a Chinese antique collector and advocate of repatriating antiquities says he put in the winning bids for both heads and doesn’t intend to pay up.
Yahoo! Buzz"I believe that any Chinese person would stand up at this time... I am making an effort to fulfill my own responsibilities," Cai Mingchao, the head of a Chinese auction house and an advisor to the National Treasures Fund, which issued a statement on his behalf Monday. "But I must stress that this money I cannot pay."
It is not clear that Cai cannot afford the bronzes. He made news in 2006 for an expensive purchase he did make, paying $15 million for a Ming dynasty Buddha image at a Sotheby's (nyse: BID - news - people ) auction in Hong Kong.
Bogus bidding by a serious collector who runs an auction house – it’s just the latest surreal twist in an affair that has escalated quickly since before last week's record-breaking auction of the Yves Saint Laurent collection that took in 373 million euros. The fake bids and buyer's commission account for more than 31 million euros ($40 million) of that total.
The Chinese government asserts that the bronzes are stolen property and should be returned. Indeed they originally were stolen – back in 1860, when French and British troops plundered the Old Summer Place in Beijing. But the heads have been sold and resold a number of times since, and a French court ruled last week that despite Chinese objections, the auction could go ahead.
Seller Pierre Berge, the longtime partner of Saint Laurent, fanned Chinese nationalist flames the weekend before by declaring he would give China back the bronze rabbit and rat heads for free if Tibetans can get their freedom and the Dalai Lama is welcomed back to China.
Comment On This Story
China has since said it will punish Christie's with tough inspections of any art and antiquities coming in and out of the mainland with Christie's documentation, a tactic that could disrupt the flow even of works whose provenance is uncontested. That could discourage some buyers and sellers.
The Chinese nationalist furor over the bronze heads had already reached a point where some buyers may have been discouraged from buying them in Paris Wednesday night, when whatever bidding war took place was entirely by telephone, confidentially. After the auction, some overseas Chinese in Paris were reported to be hunting for the identity of the buyer, complete with a reward.
Markets Brief March 02, 2009 02:50 PM EST
Dow Dwindles On AIG Aid
There was a familiar story on Wall Street Monday: The latest government effort to aid the financial system was met with a sharp fall for the major averages, which tumbled to their worst levels since 1... Read More
Full Markets Coverage >
Cai's announcement Monday apparently means that hunt will not be necessary, at least for the time being.
But it raises some interesting questions: Who will dare stop China now from reacquiring the bronzes it wants so badly? Might Cai have been bidding against someone who was trying to get the heads back for China, unwittingly driving up the price of repatriation? It is possible, after all, that the second-place bidder was a wealthy businessman like Stanley Ho, the Macau casino magnate and Forbes rich list member who has already helped China repatriate other bronze heads from the same 12-piece set representing the signs of the Chinese zodiac.
It is difficult to imagine a bidder who would want the bronzes who did not have strong feelings about China one way or the other, and it seems likely that the most interested buyers would be Chinese nationalists.
The Chinese government has made this such an issue, and nationalist feelings are so intense, that the rabbit and animal heads now certainly cannot be displayed outside of greater China without essentially causing an international incident.
A collector who really dislikes the way Beijing handles Tibet or dissidents would have to be willing to pay tens of millions of dollars for the privilege of keeping the heads out of Beijing's hands and out of the public eye. Of course, there is already one collector who has that kind of money and who made clear he does not care what China thinks of him. He's Pierre Berge, the seller. Christie's would not comment yesterday on Cai's announcement, but what happens to the bronze heads now is probably up to him to decide.
--Thomson Reuters contributed to this story.
作者：ceo/cfo 在 海归茶馆 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
|
|
|
| 返回顶端 |
|
 |
|
-
 我个人觉得这事法方做的 very insensitive if not sheer stupid. 福布斯报道说， -- ceo/cfo - (4984 Byte) 2009-3-03 周二, 05:38 (1777 reads) - 不是愚蠢，是可悲 -- 网客JT - (890 Byte) 2009-3-05 周四, 08:24 (310 reads)
- . -- linda98 - (71 Byte) 2009-3-04 周三, 19:37 (240 reads)
|
|
|
|
您不能在本论坛发表新主题, 不能回复主题, 不能编辑自己的文章, 不能删除自己的文章, 不能发表投票, 您 不可以 发表活动帖子在本论坛, 不能添加附件不能下载文件, |
|
|
