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Chinese culture
Opinion
SCMP Editorial
SCMP Editorial

Editorial | Palace Museum begins its second century as a cultural guidepost

China’s Palace Museum continues to be an important force in bringing the country’s past to life

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A view of the Palace Museum from Jingshan Park in Beijing on September 4. The city is set to celebrate the museum’s 100th anniversary after the Forbidden City was converted into a public museum. Photo: Eugene Lee
SCMP Editorial
Museums are vital guardians of history, bringing the past to life with an understanding that guides society’s steps into the future. That role is being celebrated as China’s Palace Museum begins its second century on a promising note, with a Hong Kong branch that has been a game changer for the city’s cultural scene.
It has been 100 years since the original museum was established on October 10, 1925, in the Forbidden City complex of ancient imperial palaces in Beijing. The museum was not even through its first decade before it faced its first major challenge during World War II. To protect the collection from Japanese invasion forces, museum caretakers mounted the world’s largest and longest migration of cultural treasures in 1933, moving some 20,000 crates of priceless relics on what would be a 17-year trek.

Incredibly, less than 0.03 per cent of the collection was lost or damaged thanks to the brave actions of museum workers, scholars, soldiers and ordinary citizens. During the ordeal, hundreds of items were even sent for exhibition in London and Moscow, where they helped garner international support for the nation.

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The collection was divided in 1949 when the Nationalist government, facing defeat by the Communists, moved nearly 3,000 crates of items to Taiwan. The island has since run its own National Palace Museum in Taipei and set up a southern branch in Chiayi in 2015. Despite tensions between Beijing and Taipei, the museums have sometimes organised exchanges and collaborations viewed as an important gauge of cross-strait relations.

The very survival of the museum and its contents is a symbol of China’s resilience. Preservation of relics from 5,000 years of Chinese civilisation has long been a priority for the nation, especially following the painful loss of other heritage when Western forces plundered the capital in the 1860s and in 1900.

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In recent decades, as many Western nations have scaled back cultural spending, China has invested heavily in its museums. The approach does more than just preserve history – it builds national pride, fosters people-to-people exchange and projects cultural soft power. Those roles are echoed in the Hong Kong Palace Museum, which opened in the city in 2022. Though managed independently, the institutions have been described as “brothers” by their directors, who are now discussing fresh loans of priceless artefacts for next year.
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