Photo: VCG

The Taipei Palace Museum in the island of Taiwan has reportedly abandoned the name of the Palace Museum, but the move has drawn criticism.

Many netizens from both the Chinese mainland and the island, as well as some of the local media in Taiwan, said that if the administration of the museum changed the name, then maybe they should send cultural relics removed from the Palace Museum in Beijing back to their original home.

"Now that it is not the Palace Museum, it has no qualification to possess these royal collections. Please give the cultural relics back to Beijing," one netizen commented on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo.

Besides changing the name, it was also reported that the administrative institute of the museum might be transferred from the island's administrative authority to the cultural authority, which means that the museum will see an administrative downgrade, the local Central News Agency reported.

Li Meng-yen, an official with the administrative authority, denied the plan to change the museum's name on Tuesday and said that the authority is discussing the issue of changes for the administrative institute of the museum.

The head of the cultural authority noted that the top 10 museums around the world are all managed by cultural authorities and that is why they launched the discussions.

"The name of the Taipei Palace Museum will not be changed. They do not dare to do this," Yu Keli, director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Taiwan Studies in Beijing, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Between 1948 and 1949, the Kuomintang authorities transported 5,522 boxes of cultural relics from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, of which 2,972 were from the Palace Museum in Beijing, according to a report by People's Daily.

The report said that the Taipei Palace Museum was built in 1965, and cultural relics that were moved from the Palace Museum in Beijing have been preserved there.

The administrative authority of the island has launched some measures to weaken the bonds between the two Palace Museums in the last few years. It tried to amend the regulations of the museum and delete the origin of its collections, the People's Daily report said. It also considered a change of name for the museum before, but this plan was cancelled.