Western Auction Houses’ Unlikely Role In Promoting China’s Soft Power

MOVIES GET MOST of the popular attention when it comes to the cultural front in China’s drive to raise its global soft power. But we are reminded today of the role fine art and antiques can play, and of the need for the country’s artists to establish themselves as international brands.

Last year, China accounted for nearly one quarter of the $61 billion global art market, according to the TEFAF Art Market Report. Its $15 billion of sales were second only to those of America artists. Two thirds of Chinese artists’ sales came at auction, with more than two-thirds of those sales taking place within the country.

Art Net, an online auction and arts news site based in New York, has now totted up which modern and contemporary Chinese artists have been the biggest money spinners at auction over the past three and a half years. The bigger the sale; the higher the international profile.

Topping its list is the late Wu Guanzhong, whose landscapes have given him the title of the father of modern Chinese painting and whose works have realized $510 million over the period under review, including the $23.5 million sale of a 1973 oil on paper landscape, the most expensive individual work. Zao Wou-Ki, the French-Chinese abstract artist who died last year, is second with auction sales of $417.6 million. Third is the highest ranked living Chinese artist, Zeng Fanzhi, at $226 million.

Art Net also notes that the international auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, are accounting for an increasing share of sales. Local salesrooms such as Beijing A&F Auction, Poly International and, in Taipei, Ravenel are being squeezed out — further evidence that, as the U.S. has found with Hollywood, the market may be a more powerful arm of cultural diplomacy than state-sponsored organisations such as the Confucius Institute.

China’s TV And Film Industries: Unexploited Soft Power

A report crosses this Bystander’s desk from Oxford Economics, a consultancy commissioned to quantify the economic impact of China’s film and TV industries. The commission comes from the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood’s lobbying arm, and the China Film Distributors and Exhibitors Association. It is, no doubt, intended as an opportune prod in the direction of more opening of China’s domestic film and TV markets by emphasizing the potential for growth at a time when boosting cultural industries and “going out” is to the forefront 0f Beijing’s mind.

The reports lays out quite how significant, fast-growing, and promising the industry is — as would be expected in a country with a large population, strong economic growth and rising incomes. Oxford Economics tots up for 2011 a 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) contribution to GDP, 909,000 jobs and 22 billion yuan in tax revenue from the industry directly.

Taking into account the multiplier effect across the rest of the economy, the report boosts those numbers to a 272 billion yuan contribution to GDP, 4.5 million jobs and 57 billion yuan in tax revenues. That later GDP number is equivalent to 0.6% of total GDP, similar to the contributions of  the computer and telecoms equipment industries. Where the film and TV industries are much different is in their level of exports. Total exports in 2011, Oxford Economics reckons, were 2.3 billion yuan, 90% of which was accounted for by film. The telecoms equipment makers did more than 10 times as much each quarter.

Cultural exports are these days a central part of a country’s soft power — as Hollywood’s bear testament, just as much as do China’s tight quotas on foreign film imports. While the leadership in Beijing is now paying more attention to this aspect of China’s global projection of itself, China has not been able to convert its popular arts and culture into an arm of diplomacy in the way that, say, its neighbour South Korea has. Hallyu,  a mix of popular South Korean films, TV, food and K-pop music culminating in the Gangnam-style phenomenon, has proven to be an extraordinary calling card for the country. South Korea has risen to 11th on Monocle magazine’s annual ranking of soft power, a list on which China doesn’t make the top 20.

It has also made South Korea a destination for cultural tourists, particularly from the rest of the region. What little film and TV tourism there is in China is local and localized. That is a hugely untapped opportunity, the Oxford Economics report suggests, treading safe ground rather than venturing into the deeper waters of exporting cultural values and projecting soft power. In the same vein, it casts the impact of hallyu in the light of domestic tourism within South Korea.

The unsaid part highlights another difference between South Korea and China, whose state-planned cultural exports have focused on traditional high-culture aspects of China’s arts and heritage, as might be expected of programmes devised by government officials and intellectuals. South Korea’s cultural image is very much a reflection of its contemporary and popular culture, which is driven, for better or worse, by a commercial market. China, where even popular TV is sanitized for social correctness, doesn’t have such a readily accessible and identifiable non-political contemporary culture, or the rambunctious marketplace to nurture it.

The Puzzling Case Of Shyamsunder Agrawal And Deepak Raheja

This Bystander doesn’t quite know what to make of the strange case of Shyamsunder Agrawal and Deepak Raheja, but the two Indian businessman have caused a rumpus between Beijing and New Delhi.

Agrawal and Raheja were doing business in Yiwu, a city in Zhejiang southwest of Shanghai which is a big import-export trade hub for small manufactures. As best as we can tell they were attempting to leave town last month with unpaid debts running in to the millions of yuan. Whether the debts were theirs or those of their employer, as they claim, is unclear. But they were seized by local traders — they say kidnapped — and physically mistreated — they say tortured. An Indian consular official who had gone to Yiwu to sort the matter out was roughed up and fainted in a local court, allegedly after being denied medicine to treat his diabetes (an allegation denied by the foreign ministry in a legalistic statement that said China strictly abided by the Vienna Convention on the treatment of consular officials). Higher authorities eventually intervened, put the Indians up in a local hotel and then moved them to Shanghai to recover from their injuries after a large crowd surrounded the hotel. Five of the traders involved are to be prosecuted.

All, seemingly, an unfortunate if ugly incident, peculiar to itself and handled–or mishandled–as the circumstances warranted. Yet it produced an official and public lambasting of Indian traders operating in China and an equally forthright repost from India denigrating China’s legal system and advising its nationals to boycott Yiwu.

The spat has risen to a level where foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei was moved to say this week, “China hopes that the Indian side can positively educate and guide the country’s people doing business in China to abide by Chinese laws and regulations, practise honesty and trustworthiness and operate legally.” India’s retort: “Based on experience, there is no guarantee that legal remedies will be readily available. In case of disputes arising, experience suggests that there is inadequate protection for safety of persons.”

We know nothing of the original circumstances of this case beyond what we have read in press reports. This may all blow over, but, rightly or wrongly, it will confirm a lot of popular conceptions around the world about how much of China still works away from the big, international cities. Our man in Delhi tells us this case has touched a popular anti-Chinese nerve in India and triggered calls for a boycott of Chinese imports–though we imagine that if the businessmen and diplomat had been American, European or Australian there would have been much the same popular outrage in their respective countries. It also shows how much work Beijing still has to do in projecting China’s soft power.