China has set up a database in an effort to reclaim lost cultural relic treasures abroad, said Shan Jixiang, Director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage on Thursday.

"The Chinese government is making its utmost to reclaim and collect the precious cultural relics lost overseas," he told a press conference organized by the Information Office of the State Council on Thursday.

China is among the countries which lost a large number of cultural relics over the past two centuries.

(Xinhua News Agency May 25, 2006)