US hands over 64 artefacts to China in diplomatic push before summit - South China Morning Post

Caroline LinPublished: 7:00pm, 18 Sep 2026Updated: 8:01pm, 18 Sep 2026The United States has returned dozens of cultural relics to China ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s coming visit to Washington, a goodwill gesture to help pave the way for a positive summit.At the handover ceremony at the Chinese embassy in Washington on Wednesday, China officials received 58 cultural relics and palaeontological fossils from the cultural property, art and antiquities programme of US Homeland Security Investigations.

A further six items were returned a day later by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York.

“The repatriation marks the latest step to implement the common understandings reached by the two presidents in their meetings in Beijing, and also demonstrates the broad prospects of building a constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Friday.

“China and the US should go in the same direction in the spirit of equality, mutual respect and mutual benefit so as to accomplish more great and concrete things for the good of our two countries and peoples.”