Dan Yixin, son of Dan Bin, a renowned collector of ancient artifacts, sued the Shanghai Museum, alleging serious negligence concerning the return of cultural artifacts confiscated during the Cultural Revolution. Dan Yixin discovered a list of over 1,000 unreturned items and traces of tampering on the return certificates. Furthermore, some of the returned paintings reportedly had only the cloth parts of the hanging scrolls remaining, with the central paintings cut out. This was reported by the Hong Kong magazine Asia Weekly.

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Dan Bin, born in 1909 and passed away in 1993, was a renowned collector of ancient artifacts. Based in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, he achieved great success as an entrepreneur by establishing pharmaceutical and shipping companies, while dedicating his life to appraising and collecting antiques and protecting local cultural heritage. Dan Bin also had a record of donations to the Wenzhou City Museum, and in his later years, he served as an advisor to the Wenzhou City Cultural Relics Management Committee.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Dan Bin came to reside in Shanghai. When the Cultural Revolution broke out in the 1960s, Dan Bin's residence was searched by the rebel faction (Cultural Revolution proponents) of the Shanghai Museum, and he was forced to surrender all of his more than 4,000 cultural artifacts. Later, the family moved to Wenzhou. When Shanghai implemented a policy in the 1980s to return confiscated cultural artifacts to their original owners, only 1,088 items were returned to the Dan family, while the return of the remaining more than 3,000 items continued to be refused.

For many years, the Dan family has requested copies of the confiscation inventory from relevant departments in Shanghai to ascertain the full extent of the unreturned cultural artifacts. Dan Yixin and others repeatedly requested disclosure of the inventory from the Shanghai Municipal Cultural Heritage Administration, but the administration responded on May 20, 2025, stating that "the requested inventory does not exist." In response, Dan Yixin filed an administrative lawsuit with the Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court, claiming that the administration was not fulfilling its government-mandated duty of information disclosure.

The defendant, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, argued in court that "no inventory of returned cultural artifacts was found. There are only certificates of delivery (to the original owners)." However, upon examining the materials presented, Dan Yixin and others discovered two previously unseen original certificates listing a total of over 1,000 unreturned cultural artifacts in Dan Bin's name. These certificates bore no record of the Dan family's signature, nor was there any actual record of the Dan family receiving them. Furthermore, the 1980 return certificate and 10-page list issued by the bureau showed signs of two lists being connected and copied, with clear evidence of forgery, including altered numbers and concealed text.

Dan Bin
The Shanghai Pudong New Area People's Court ultimately ruled to dismiss Dan Yixin's claim. When Asia Weekly inquired about the matter with the Museum Division (Museum Section) of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism (Wenlv Bureau), the Museum Division refused to answer and referred the inquiry to the Wenlv Bureau's General Office (Administrative Office). The head of the General Office stated, "It is the responsibility of the operations department, and what the Museum Division said (that the General Office is responsible) is nonsense," ultimately resulting in a game of passing the buck within the organization.

Disputes concerning missing donated or confiscated cultural artifacts and mismanagement in museums are frequent across various regions of China.

As one symbolic incident, it became a major issue when it was discovered that valuable ancient paintings, gratuitously donated to the Nanjing Museum by the renowned collector Pang Laichen, had disappeared from the museum's collection storage and were illegally circulated on the auction market.

In this incident, Pang Laichen's family noticed the auction listing and reported it to the National Cultural Heritage Administration, which is responsible for cultural property management in the central government. Jiangsu Province then launched an investigation, and the findings were released 26 years later. According to the investigation, in the 1990s, the then executive vice president of the Nanjing Museum illegally signed off, and relatives involved purchased these paintings for an exceptionally low price of just a few thousand yuan (tens of thousands of yen) and resold them on the market. The auction was canceled due to the sudden turn of events, but an estimated price of 88 million yuan (approximately 2 billion yen) had been indicated prior to that.

Furthermore, private collector Cui Fengxiang reported the disappearance of a Buddha statue he had donated to the National Museum. The family of collector Wu Ying is also seeking to track 60 out of 241 items they donated to the Palace Museum in the 1950s, as there are no movement records for them. In addition to these, numerous other cases of "missing" cultural artifacts donated by private collectors to museums have occurred, and this incident related to Dan Bin has further intensified distrust in the nation's cultural heritage management system. (Translation/Editing by Kisaragi Hayato)