China stamp fetches record US$475,000

The rare 1968 stamp was picked up by an unidentified Asian buyer, who paid 3.68 million Hong Kong dollars (475,000 US dollars), a record for a Chinese stamp.

Six other smaller stamps of the same design were also sold for a combined 2.93 million Hong Kong dollars.

Designer Wang Wei Sheng, who watched the hammer fall, told AFP he had feared he would be punished for his mistake.

"For a long time I was really worried that I would be jailed," he said.

"Officials told me that it was a really big mistake, but in the end nothing happened."

Wan and other designers had been commissioned to make a series of stamps during the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of mass political and social upheaval in China starting in the mid-sixties.

His stamp features a worker holding a book filled with leader Mao Zedong's quotations and a red China map in the background.

However, Wan had left Taiwan uncoloured, a blunder that sparked a recall of the stamps just half a day after their release.

Taiwan split from China in 1949 at the end of a civil war and has been ruled separately since, but Beijing still considers the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification.

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