The V&A has one of the most comprehensive and important collections of Chinese art outside East Asia, with pieces dating from 3000 BC to the present day.

The V&A acquired its first group of Chinese objects in 1852 and today the collection amounts to approximately 18,000 objects, with examples from all branches of Chinese art including ceramics, jade, metalwork, lacquer, textiles, furniture, sculpture, ivory, bamboo, rhinoceros horn, glass, paintings, manuscripts and prints.

The collection is particularly strong in the applied arts of later dynastic China, after AD 1500.