Lessons from Ukraine prompted Taiwan's top museum to conduct 'wartime response' exercises

written by Wayne Chan, CNNTaipei, Taiwan

In March, amid growing fears of a Russian attack on Ukraine’s cultural capital Lviv, city officials national museum Thousands of treasures were frantically packed and hidden.

Now, more than 5,000 miles away, another globally acclaimed institution is also preparing for the threat of possible invasion.

Boasting one of the world’s largest collections of Chinese imperial relics, Taiwan’s National Palace Museum is actively considering how to protect its treasures should Beijing launch an attack. As China mounts military pressure on the autonomous island, the agency last week conducted its first-ever “wartime response exercise” centered on the removal of relics.

“The most important goal of this exercise is to let staff know who is doing what and how they will react if war breaks out,” said Wu Micha, director of the museum, before the training session. told CNN. Security and law enforcement agencies to improve their plans.

Staff members were walked through various scenarios and protocols during the exercises. credit: National Palace Museum

Movement Comes After Wu clearly He could not think of an ideal place to store the museum’s historical relics during the war. They devised an evacuation strategy and promised to conduct drills in July.

The Chinese Communist Party has long claimed Taiwan as its own territory, and although it has never taken control of the island, it has never denied taking it by force. In recent months, the autonomous democracy of 24 million people has faced a growing military posture from China, which has frequently deployed fighter jets near the island. Late June, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force flied According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense, 29 aircraft entered the territory’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).

China’s tacit support for Russia’s war on Ukraine speculation fueled It raises questions about how the world would react if it launched an attack over its intentions with Taiwan.Concerns over the possibility of aggression led the Taiwanese government to Strengthen Its combat readiness and wartime readiness. Three of his other institutions in Taiwan, the National Taiwan Museum, the National Museum of Taiwan History and the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, have also devised evacuation strategies for their collections, confirmed to CNN.

During last week’s exercise, about 180 staff members learned how to respond to different scenarios. This includes how to call the police and military for help if security facilities are damaged and artifacts are seized by enemy forces. According to the museum, the special training is in addition to existing safety training (which is currently tailored for terrorist attacks and natural disasters in the earthquake-prone capital city of Taipei) and provides an overall sense of security for staff protecting the collection. Increase your ability.

Special training is in addition to existing safety training. credit: National Palace Museum

In the case of evacuation, the museum said it will focus on preserving about 90,000 artifacts from its 700,000-strong collection, prioritizing higher-value artifacts and those that take up less space.

“In the event of war, it is up to the Supreme Commander to decide whether the artifacts need to be removed,” a museum official said. Museums need to get ready now.” .

The museum did not disclose where the evacuated items would be stored or how they would be transported there.

survive two wars

Taiwan’s National Palace Museum is known for its vast collection of artifacts that were once housed in the Palace Museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City.

In the early 1930s, in anticipation of Japan’s invasion of Beijing, the Chinese government moved some of the Emperor’s collections south to Shanghai and Nanjing. Ten years after that, many of the relics were transported further inland to various locations in Sichuan province.

Part of the imperial collection displayed outside the Gates of Supreme Harmony in Beijing’s Forbidden City before being transferred to Shanghai and Nanjing. credit: National Palace Museum

Accompanied by groups of dedicated escorts who faced the constant threat of bombardment, the treasure was transported across the country via trains, trucks, horse-drawn carriages and boats, hidden in temples and caves along the way. The collection was reorganized in Nanjing in 1947, two years after surrendering to the

The treasure was accompanied by an escort on its journey across China. credit: Jangling/National Palace Museum

By then, however, the bloody civil war between the then-ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) and the rebel Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had resumed. When the defeated Kuomintang forces withdrew to Taiwan in 1949, they brought back more than 600,000 items from the Palace Museum and other academic institutions: artifacts, works of art, books, maps, and government records. , which formed the backbone of the collection of the Taipei Museum.

After storing items in a former sugar factory and caves outside the city of Taichung, Taiwan, the Kuomintang dug tunnels deep into the hills outside Taipei to store the relics. Built at the foot of the building, the collection was opened to the public after its opening in 1965.

Part of the imperial collection was temporarily stored in a cave on the outskirts of Taichung, where the museum staff work. credit: Jangling/National Palace Museum

Political significance of museums

For decades, museums and their treasures have been imbued with political and national symbolism.

When the Kuomintang withdrew to Taiwan, it took what was deemed the most valuable of the Palace Museum’s collection. According to Su Yawei, an art history professor at National Taiwan University, the possession of these items establishes the Communist Party as custodians of Chinese culture and strengthens its claim to be China’s legitimate government. did.

One of the most famous relics in Taiwan’s National Palace Museum is the jadeite cabbage. credit: Koji Sasahara/AP

Su added that this position became more pronounced during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, when much of China’s traditions were destroyed in Mao’s campaign against the “Four Ancients.”

“It was during this period that the museum’s collection became very important because it was the embodiment of Chinese culture,” Su said.

In recent decades, the National Palace Museum has expanded its reach beyond China, holding various types of exhibitions and introducing new South Branch, located in rural Chiayi County, showcases the interconnectedness of Asian cultures. But the collection of treasures from the mainland “put Taiwan on the map,” said Wu, the museum’s director.

“The war brought these artifacts to Taiwan,” he added. “It is our responsibility to protect these irreplaceable heritages of human civilization.”

Source: www.cnn.com

Lessons from Ukraine prompted Taiwan’s top museum to conduct ‘wartime response’ exercises

survive two wars

Political significance of museums

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