The New York Times reports that the two Chinas have a deal on some Imperial art:

The Palace Museum in Beijing has agreed to lend works of art to the National Palace Museum in Taipei for an exhibition next autumn, temporarily bringing together a small part of China’s imperial collection for the first time in 60 years, both museums said on Monday.

The art works — mainly paintings of Emperor Yongzheng, an 18th century ruler of China, and his concubines — are part of China’s immense imperial art collection, long divided by strife. The Nationalists took nearly a quarter of the collection, including most of the best works, when they lost China’s civil war to the Communists in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan. [ . . . ]

State-run media in Beijing, which usually serve as carefully orchestrated mouthpieces for government policy on Taiwan in particular, could not agree on Monday on the number of works that the Beijing authorities would allow to be shipped to Taipei. The official China Daily newspaper said that 29 pieces would be lent while the official Xinhua news agency said that 17 works would be included.

[ . . . ] The directors of the Beijing and Taipei museums also reached seven other agreements during meetings over the weekend in Beijing, according to the National Palace Museum. Under these, the deputy directors of the two museums will meet annually, the two museums’ personnel will exchange visits, the museums’ catalogs will be coordinated, their monthly and quarterly publications will be coordinated, their Web sites will be linked, they will cooperate on academic conferences and their gift shops will sell souvenirs from both museums.

But the two sides did not attempt to resolve the thorniest question of all: mainland China’s legal claim to full ownership of the entire imperial collection, including the holdings of the National Palace Museum. The Taipei museum refuses to lend any works to the mainland for fear that they will not be returned, and has only rarely lent works from the imperial collection to other countries for fear of legal action.

China Agrees to Lend Art to Museum in Taiwan (Bloomberg)