China accuses Taiwan museum of trashing tradition
Reforms at a Taiwan museum housing the world's biggest collection of Chinese art are an attempt to purge the vast treasure chest of its mainland heritage, state media said on Friday, warning of a cultural battle. Taipei's National Palace Museum houses 654,500 art works and artefacts shipped in 2,972 crates from the mainland after 1948 when Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan from advancing Communists. Since then, the island has been politically split from China, and the museum, which reopens next month after two years of remodeling, has become a symbol of the tensions between the two sides. The museum intends to remove explanations that exhibits originally came from Beijing's Palace Museum, known in the West as the Forbidden City, the People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's paper said. The paper's overseas edition said the changes were part of an effort to "de-Sinify" Taiwan's culture and encourage the island's full independence from the mai