Users on China's most popular social media platform are rounding on the British Museum, demanding thousands of ancient Chinese artefacts are returned.
The hashtag "The British Museum please return Chinese antiquities" topped Weibo yesterday, with more than half a billion views, after a piece published by Chinese state media called for the repatriation of 23,000 "stolen" items kept in the museum.
The world-famous museum has been left reeling after around 2000 precious items were reported allegedly stolen two weeks ago.
A member of staff was sacked when the news first broke and director Hartwig Fischer also announced he would step down.
The museum looks after 23,000 Chinese objects, from the Neolithic age to the present day, which makes it one of the largest collections of Chinese antiquities in the West.
As pressure ramps up on the museum, one user on Weibo called for the institution to "return the objects to their original owner".
Another demanded now that China "is rich and the people are strong, it's time to have our treasures back home".
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In its article, state media outlet Global Times argued that the world-renowned museum has failed to take good care of "cultural property belonging to other countries".
"The huge loopholes in the management and security of cultural objects in the British Museum exposed by this scandal have led to the collapse of a long-standing and widely circulated claim that 'foreign cultural objects are better protected in the British Museum'," the editorial reads.
The museum's Chinese collection includes a large range of paintings, prints, jade, bronzes and ceramics.
Demands for the return of priceless treasures and artefacts have intensified after the alleged theft of items from the museum.
Greece has renewed calls for the museum to give back the Elgin Marbles, also known as the Parthenon Sculptures, and Nigerian officials are agitating for return of the Benin Bronzes taken from the Benin kingdom which now lies within its territory.
Some Indigenous Australians have also argued the museum should repatriate a shield believed to have been collected at Botany Bay in 1770 by Captain Cook or one of his men.
Rationalising its holdings, the museum's general position has long been that there should be one place where the whole world could be viewed at once.
