AFP - Cultural officials in China on Wednesday harshly criticised plans by a French auction house to sell an 18th century jade imperial seal, in the latest row over the sale of looted relics.
  
The auctioneer Beaussant-Lefevre has advertised the item on its website, estimating its value at 300,000-400,000 euros (396,000-528,000 dollars). The sale was due to take place Wednesday in Paris.
  
The authorities that manage Beijing's Summer Palace, former home to China's Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) emperors, said the seal was taken about 150 years ago by foreign troops.
  
"We once again express strong indignation at this sort of repeated action that hurts the Chinese people's feelings, harms their cultural interests, and violates relevant international pacts," the palace authority said in a statement quoted by the official China News Service.
  
The sale of the item comes two months after auction house Christie's sold two bronze animal heads which belonged to late French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner Pierre Berge for 15.7 million euros.
  
That sale sparked a firestorm of criticism in China and added to tensions in Sino-French relations already strained by a December meeting between President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama that infuriated Beijing.
  
Like the bronzes, the jade imperial seal was looted when British and French forces burned down the Summer Palace towards the end of the Second Opium War in 1860, the People's Daily newspaper said.
  
It said the seal comes from the personal collection of a descendant of Elie Jean de Vassoigne, a French general who commanded some of the invading troops.
  
The palace authority's statement said "such relics should all be repatriated to China and returned to their place of origin".
  
China's communist central government did not immediately comment on the issue.
  
Authorities in Beijing had repeatedly called for the sale of the Saint Laurent bronzes to be halted, and the relics returned to China.
  
A Chinese art collector later said he was the bidder but refused to pay, leaving the auction in limbo.