Thread:ProfDraco2/@comment-24588058-20180722035246/@comment-24588058-20180723165810

That's actually a good point, since we never did get a complete picture there.

It can't be as large as Warehouse 13, or they wouldn't want it so badly. If I were to guess (feel free to interject if you think I'm wrong), a Chinese artifact collecting group, much like the Japanese one, probably wouldn't have gotten very large simply due to the social and political seclusion, possibly right up to the Communist Revolution there. At that point (as I might assume government officials might be in charge), they would have the resources to actually expand. They search more carefully so as not to alert the other major player on the field (which they probably suspect, and later confirm, to be the United States, though not realizing that the country itself doesn't have as much sway in Warehouse protocol).

For the most part, they handled artifact cases which the Warehouse is unable to (perhaps they went to countries that weren't on good terms with the U.S., which at that time would have been the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, etc.). As the world became more open, they realized it became a lot harder to keep hidden (even finding that the Agents would come to China if an artifact pinged). Perhaps they thought they could negotiate the sale of the Warehouse with the United States, and they could therefore take control of the massive array of artifacts inside?

Also, I don't know if we ever really determined this or not, so I apologize if I am reasking. I know every host country seems to play a different role in the activities of the Warehouse. The Roman Empire, the Huns, and the Mongols, for example, played a huge role in how the Warehouse was run, and it even seems implied that Russia was the same way (the middle Warehouses are unclear). But with Warehouses 12 and 13, it almost seems like the government had barely a clue that there even was a Warehouse or exactly what it was (we see it in the show, of course, and it almost seems implied that very few government officials actually KNOW what Warehouse 13 is - and actually, I did wonder about this, but why would the Warehouse invite a U.S. Senator? Why not have the actual leader of the Country, the President, come in? Or someone from his Cabinet?). My question is, aside from the obvious reasons, what caused the change of knowledge? Was it just that Napoleon caused the fear, or was this a steady build-up?