Chinese cultural heritage on the art market: antiquities and artworks trade features at the auctions in 2000-2018

For the last 30 years, China demonstrates phenomenal growth on the international art market and finally, it became the second-large art market in 2017. With its political ambitious, China starts to pursue the policy of returning its cultural heritage that was taken out of the country during the intervention. Repatriation and restitution of the cultural heritage are the key national policy of the Chinese government in the national cultural idea. This paper is focused on the analysis and recognising of the particularities and general tendencies of Chinese antique auction trading. The first chapter represents a review of the Chinese art market and its material cultural heritage. The second chapter examines legal aspects of protection of cultural heritage and auction trade, analyses international and Chinese normative legal acts both. The third chapter is about a unique phenomenon of Chinese-European collision of views on the international art market. During the examination of the issue, we discuss some shortcomings of the Chinese legislative acts of protection of cultural heritage and auction trade and we claim that it needs to be updated. Besides, taking into account that selling the objects of Chinese cultural heritage often brings China and Western countries to serious contradictions. The attachment includes illustrations of the mentioned objects of cultural heritage. Keywords: art market, cultural heritage, antiquities, auction trad