Money Talks: Buying Influence with Art

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Source: Huffington Post
Decades of economic prosperity in China have allowed Chinese citizens to build their fortunes and spawned a new class: the nouveau riche.  This sector of society has increasingly become the global face of China, for better or for worse. Their companies buy-out American companies for their investment portfolios. When their families go on vacation, they make headlines for their outrageous and bizarre behavior as tourists.  These self-made entrepreneurs also have lavish spending habits, shelling out millions in cash for European luxury brands and gold-plated possessions such as iPhones and sports cars.  While these actions have generated negative press for China, these wealthy individuals have helped China through a more subtle regard: the Chinese mega-rich spend their fortunes just like their moneyed counterparts in the West – on art. Their acquisitions have not only boosted the Chinese art market and created a burgeoning art scene that now catches the attention of gallery-goers in Europe and America, but also, more importantly, helped China regain ancient treasures that the West took during colonial ages. The Chinese government, noticing these trends, has been quietly encouraging these changes in the recent years.

Billionaire Liu Yiqian is a perfect example to represent this new generation of millionaires and billionaires from China that are over-taking the art world and helping their country accrue cultural capital in the process. Last year, at a Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale, Liu made headlines when he successfully bid $36 million US dollars for a 500-year-old tiny ceramic “Chicken Cup”. The cup was once owned by Emperor Qianlong and was decorated with images of roosters and hens. As soon as he paid for it with 24 swipes of his American Express card (even black cards have maximum spending limits), Liu subsequently brewed some tea and drank it out of his new cup, all the while announcing to display his new possession in his newly built private museum in Shanghai.[1]

Liu and his counterparts have amassed massive collections of Chinese art. However, since China has no established private donation structure or tax write-off for donations for museums, these collectors have instead chosen to build their own institutions to house their purchases. Notably Shanghai has become the Ground Zero for this phenomenon. Billionaire Chen Yung-Tai, owner of the electronics behemoth, the Aurora Group, established the Aurora Museum on the first six floors of the company’s eponymous skyscraper in downtown Shanghai to house his collection of ancient Buddhist art and Ming vases.[2] Liu Yiqian took his “Chicken Cup” along with the other Chinese antiquities he has collected and now displays them in his museum, the Long Museum in the West Bund cultural district. Businessman Qiao Zhibing is currently building his own museum in the West Bund, but in the meantime he displays his extensive collection of Chinese art in his flagship four-story luxe karaoke club, covering each work with inches of glass to make sure drunk patrons do not inflict damage upon his priceless works.[3] This private museum trend, along with a growing contemporary art scene and multiple art fairs, has made Shanghai the world's next major art destination.[4]

China has long used its cultural heritage as a tactic to reach out to people in other countries. As the country opened up in the 80s and 90s, the government sponsored international traveling exhibitions of antiquities as a diplomatic tool to reach out to citizens of other nations.[5] Now, it is no longer content to see the rest of its historical artifacts sitting in foreign cities.  Many other countries, ransacked by colonial powers and whose works now are scattered in museums around the world, share the sentiment. Some are demanding, even taking legal action, to get works returned. Yet this approach can ruffle a lot of feathers and alienate a lot potential trade partners.  For example, Greece is currently suing Britain over ownership of the Elgin Marbles, taken from the Parthenon in the 19th century and transported to Britain.  The case has become major international news and developments are reported on by major media news outlets. The government of Greece has taken the responsibility to recover these statues for its people, yet put itself in a vulnerable position when it needed a bailout from its EU nations, including Britain. Government involvement in recovering lost pieces of cultural heritage creates an avoidable diplomatic risk.[6]

Instead, China lets its private citizens use their own money at auctions and enacts policies on the side to encourage Chinese artworks to stay and don't leave China again. As part of the new Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the government created a tax-free policy for imported artworks, offering storage space for imports, that many collectors have taken advantage of.[7] In 2009, China signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States banning the export of anything dating Pre-Tang dynasty. The state has also completely re-written the laws on exporting antiquities, nearly making it impossible nowadays to take ancient artifacts out of China.[8]

Rather than direct confrontation, the state is taking a soft-power, subtle approach that allows China to retrieve and retain its artworks without creating a major scandal. Instead, the Chinese government prefers to encourage wealthy individuals to reclaim their cultural heritage ransacked by foreign powers in the 19th century by buying all the pieces back at auction. The government even offers rewards for citizens who return objects to China.[9] Nowhere is this fervor more apparent in the controversial case of the twelve missing bronze fountainheads from the Summer Palace. Two of them appeared at an auction of the late fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent’s collection of Chinese antiquities where a Chinese buyer bid $30 million Euros for both works. He cited it was his “patriotic” and “moral” duty to do so.[10] The bronze fountainheads eventually ended up in the state-owned Poly Museum in Beijing.[11]

This strategy has permitted China to reverse the historical norm.  Before, antiquities flowed out of China into the hands of Western collectors. The tides have now turned: the money, the influence, and the art world has come to China. The museum boom in Shanghai, the new collections of irreplaceable antiquities, and a blossoming contemporary art scene have now elevated China’s status to a cultural destination.


References
[1] Balfour, Frederik. "Billionaire Flies for Free After Paying $36 Million for Ancient Chinese Vase." BloombergBusiness. March 12, 2015. Accessed October 28, 2015.
[2] "Taiwan's 50 Richest 2015: #25 Chen Yung-Tai." Forbes. Accessed October 30, 2015.
[3] Kinsella, Eileen. "Interview with Top Collector Qiao Zhibing-artnet News." Artnet News. June 10, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2015.
[4] Bergman, Justin. "An Arts Explosion Takes Shanghai." NYTimes.com. November 7, 2015. Accessed November 8, 2015.
[5] Varutti, Marzia. Museums in China : The Politics of Representation after Mao. Rochester, New York: Boydell Press, 2014.
[6] Holehouse, Matthew. "EU Demands Britain Joins Greek Rescue Fund." The Telegraph. July 13, 2015. Accessed November 9, 2015.
[7] "The Art Market in 2014." ArtPrice.com. Accessed October 29, 2015.
[8] "The Art of Importing Chinese Objects." China Business Review. March 1, 2010. Accessed October 30, 2015.
[9] Shambaugh, David L. China Goes Global: The Partial Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
[10] "China 'patriot' Sabotages Auction." BBC News. March 2, 2009. Accessed October 30, 2015.
[11] Fiskesjo, Magnus. "Politics of Cultural Heritage." In Reclaiming Chinese Society: The New Social Activism, 225 - 245. New York: Routledge, 2010. 

Veronica Hernandez is a junior at NYU Shanghai.