The People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest standing army, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring back Chinese art treasures like those now in the homes of collectors including Ronald Lauder, chairman of Estée Lauder International; Tsui Tsin-tong, honorary chairman of the Hong Kong manufacturing and property company CNT Group; Jack Wadsworth, advisory director of Morgan Stanley; and Leon Black, founder and president of Apollo Advisers, A. Craig Copetas reports in the International Herald Tribune. Facing an acute art shortage, the Chinese government plans to construct one thousand new museums by 2015, including thirty-two in Beijing in time for the 2008 Olympics and one hundred in Shanghai before the opening of the 2010 World’s Fair, according to reports in China’s government-controlled media. The People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has so far targeted only Chinese art. But analysts say the army’s strategy over the next five years is to dip further into China’s foreign-currency reserves—about $711 billion, the second biggest after Japan, and growing—to buy and barrack celebrated Western masterpieces, often at prices above their auction-market value.
From the International Herald Tribunne