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Money can enable satisfying acts of revenge. The wronged board member returns to acquire and dismember the company; the lottery winner leaves scheming relatives out of a will. Or how about the once trampled nation that can now afford to buy back looted artifacts in a display of economic might as much as national pride?

For China's superrich, bidding successfully for objets d'art taken out of the country during the era of foreign subjugation, then bringing them home to the motherland, has become an important show of status. Like endowing a university or hospital, it wins official gratitude. But more deliciously, it can make headlines as the world oohs and ahs over sums spent. In 2006, Hong Kong petroleum executive Alice Cheng paid $19.4 million for a prized decorated bowl, shattering the previous world record for Qing dynasty porcelain. In late September, Macau gaming tycoon Stanley Ho spent $8.9 million on a bronze horse head looted by British and French troops from Beijing's old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, in 1860. He then donated the artwork, which fetched the highest price ever paid for Qing sculpture, to the Chinese state. "Bringing back all the things from the Summer Palace, it's a kind of revenge," says Chiu Che Bing, a Paris-based advisor on the restoration of the palace gardens.

The Jesuit-made horse head — one of a set of 12 Chinese zodiac symbols that adorned a palace water clock — was to have been a highlight of Sotheby's fall auctions in Hong Kong next week. But bitter memories were aroused from the moment its inclusion in the bidding became public. In 2000, ox, monkey and tiger heads from the same water clock surfaced in Hong Kong auctions, sales that were denounced by China's State Bureau of Cultural Relics. "It's ridiculous that they brought them back to a part of China to be sold," says Tsang Kin-shing, a Hong Kong district councilor who helped organize public protests against the auctions. "If we stole the Eiffel Tower and ... took it to France to auction, the French people would definitely not be happy."

While putting such treasures under the hammer means they could end up outside China again, these days it's hard to outbid the Chinese. In 2000, the bronzes were acquired by China Poly Group, an arms maker linked to the People's Liberation Army, which bought them along with a vase for $4 million. Those purchases helped spur patriotic interest in cultural artifacts among wealthy Chinese, who began bidding in auctions in New York City and London as well as Hong Kong. In 2003, mainland tire manufacturer Lu Hanzhen paid $1.5 million for a Qing vase, while Ho bought another Summer Palace bronze, a boar's head, from a U.S. collector for $723,000 — less than a tenth of what he paid to buy the horse head from an unidentified Taiwan seller.

Skyrocketing prices for Chinese artifacts are "linked with China's economic and political importance in the international realm," says Kevin Ching, CEO of Sotheby's Asia, pointing out that Chinese collectors now "have the wealth to start buying things they identify with their own culture." But while Sotheby's positions itself as a friend of China in facilitating such deals ("We are proud to act as an international platform for the repatriation of these treasures," is Ching's way of putting it), many argue that the sales are not right, even if they are legal. "This issue is a moral issue," says Cindy Ho, founder of Saving Antiquities for Everyone, a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving cultural heritage. "The Chinese zodiac animals from Yuanmingyuan ... need to be together on Chinese soil."

Ho's latest purchase means that five heads are there already. Two are in a private European collection, and five are missing. But plenty of China's past is being hawked in the meantime. The Sotheby's auction that was to have included the horse head will feature items not necessarily looted but at least traceable to Qing palaces, including a jade seal worth up to $2.5 million and two paintings worth up to $1.9 million each. Those are high prices, but patriotic tycoons are happy to pay them.

with reporting by Ling Woo Liu / Hong Kong

• Austin Ramzy / Beijing