The former director of the Nanjing Museum (Nanjing Museum), Xu Huping, who was involved in the loss of cultural relics, was sentenced to three years in prison last month and recently passed away in a prison hospital in Nanjing at the age of 81.
According to a report from the WeChat official account “Asia Weekly” by the “Asia Weekly”, the central figure of the Nanjing Museum cultural relic incident, former director Xu Huping, passed away in a prison hospital in Nanjing around 6 pm on October 12th, at the age of 81. It is understood that Xu Huping was suffering from late-stage lung cancer.
On October 14th, Zhejiang official media “China Blue News” reported that when reporters called the Nanjing Museum to verify the news, the customer service representative of the museum said that they have not yet obtained the information, and official announcements have not been released, so further confirmation of the situation is needed.
Public records show that Xu Huping, born in 1945, served as the deputy director of the Nanjing Museum for a long time, became the director of the Nanjing Museum in 2001, and retired in 2008.
In 2025, a total of 137 precious artworks, including the Ming Dynasty scroll “Jiangnan Spring” painted by Qiu Ying, donated by the Chinese collector Pang Zeng to the Nanjing Museum in early years, were found to be displayed at a pre-auction in Beijing with an estimated value of up to 88 million yuan. They were reported by descendants of the Pang family and the auction was halted.
On December 21, 2025, Guo Lidian, a retired employee of the collection department of the Nanjing Museum, reported to the authorities that the former director of the Nanjing Museum, Xu Huping, had stolen and smuggled cultural relics from the Forbidden City, profited from selling them.
With public opinion continuously fermenting, Xu Huping was investigated in February this year, subsequently expelled from the Chinese Communist Party in September, and was sentenced to three years in prison for the crime of bribery, along with a fine of 200,000 yuan.
As to whether the lost cultural relics of the Nanjing Museum have been recovered and whether high-level officials are involved, the Chinese official authorities have not clearly mentioned it so far.
On an overseas platform X, many netizens commented on the death of Xu Huping:
“This is really suspicious. If he really had lung cancer, it would have been exposed long ago with the intensity of this news. This really looks like silencing.”
“He’s dead now, all problems solved. By dying, he can protect those above him and also protect his descendants.”
“He was sentenced and then died of lung cancer in less than a month… The ‘truth’ about the lost Nanjing Museum relics that he knew probably went to the grave with him. The officials are still ‘verifying’, but the person is already gone, and the case probably ends like this. Are those behind the scenes breathing a sigh of relief?”
“Using a dying man to calm public opinion pressure is truly cunning.”