TAIPEI -- Beijing has accused Taiwan of seeking to sever the priceless Chinese cultural treasures held in the National Palace Museum in Taipei from their national roots.

China's state media has denounced as "exceedingly dangerous" a planned revision of the charter of the museum, which is home to the most precious artefacts from Beijing's fabled imperial Forbidden City, accusing Taiwan of pursuing a policy of "de-Sinification"...

The Chinese complaints centre on Taiwanese plans to revise the charter of the museum, the repository of Forbidden City treasures brought to the island by Kuomintang forces defeated on the mainland by Mao Zedong's Communists in the late 1940s. Taiwan's cabinet recently submitted to parliament a draft amendment of the museum's charter which no longer states at the top that the artefacts in it come from Beijing's Forbidden City...

Chinese scholars routinely reject claims that Taiwan's culture has been influenced by the island's indigenous Polynesian inhabitants, its extended Japanese rule and its very different history of European colonial contacts...[The People's Daily] called for vigilance against any further efforts to excise Taiwan's Chinese roots. "When slanders pass from mouth to mouth, people will believe there is a tiger in the market place. When evil people incite the crowd, the buzz of mosquitoes turns to thunder," it said.