During a visit to Athens, China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao toured the New Acropolis Museum & pledged to support Greece in their efforts to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles that are in the British Museum.

This display of support is not unexpected, considering that China has in recent years been making many efforts to track down artefacts looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin (son of the Seventh Earl who removed the Parthenon Sculptures).

From:
Athens News Agency

10/21/2010
Chinese support for return of Marbles

(ANA-MPA) — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, accompanied by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, toured the Acropolis in central Athens on Sunday morning, where the return of stolen antiquities and cultural treasures to their country of origin was discussed, amongst others. (ANA-MPA)

Wen Jiabao pledged to support Greece’s standing demand for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles, currently displayed at the British Museum in London, to the new Acropolis Museum.

The Chinese premier also recounted the looting and destruction in 1860 of the old summer palace Yuan Ming Yuan, outside Beijing, by British troops. The soldiers were acting on the orders of then British High Commissioner to China Lord Elgin, the son of the notorious Lord Elgin, the diplomat who connived of the operation to slice off and (ANA-MPA) remove the sculptures from the Ottoman-occupied Parthenon less than two decades before the Greek War of Independence.