Police shut down Lucheng museum in Liaoning after finding a third of 8,000 items on display are not genuine, report says

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

A Chinese museum has been ordered to close after thousands of its historical exhibits were found to be fake.

Police shut down the Lucheng museum, in the north-eastern province of Liaoning, after finding almost a third of the 8,000 items on display were not genuine, the state-run Global Times newspaper reported on Thursday.

Counterfeits on show included a sword touted as dating from the Qing Dynasty and worth 120 million yuan (£11m), the report said.

China is on a museum-building spree, with 299 new establishments registering last year, according to state media. But fakes are said to be rife in its antiques market, posing a problem for the country's growing ranks of private collectors.

A Chinese tycoon who owns two museums is embroiled in a row with experts from the state-backed Shanghai Museum over the authenticity of a scroll for which he paid more than £5m at a Sotheby's auction in New York.

A fake ancient Qing dynasty bottle vase with a gold traced design featuring a laughing squid, discovered at a museum in Jizhou city, Hebei province. Photograph: weibo.com

Separately, last year a museum in the central province of Henan was found to contain scores of fake exhibits, including a vase decorated with cartoon characters but described as a Qing dynasty artefact.

Pictures posted by the state-run China Radio International showed the vase decorated with bright green cartoon animals, including one resembling a laughing squid.

The report quoted Chinese antiques expert Ma Weidu saying: "Similar fake museums are found in many places in China in search of monetary gain."