In the winter of 1995, scores of police officers raided artists' studios and homes in Yuanmingyuan Artist Village (Yuanmingyuan huajiacun 圆明园画家村) in a western suburb of Beijing. In the ensuing chaos, many artists were hand-cuffed and thrown in jail, effectively dismantling the first artist village in contemporary China. The art community was located near Yuanmingyuan, a magnificent 18th-century imperial palace, which was destroyed by foreign troops in the mid-19th century. By the late 1980s, a group of young artists had breathed new life into the ruined area by settling down in a nearby village and transforming the locale into a frontier of contemporary Chinese arts. Adjacent to the major universities in Beijing, the growing underground artist village was considered by the police as a potential source of social unrest, and the government justified its closure on the grounds of improving public safety.
Ten years after the demolition of the Yuanmingyuan Artist Village, two new art communities emerged in Beijing (See Figure 1). One is situated in Factory 798 (798 chang 厂), a military factory complex built in the 1950s in the north-east of Beijing, which once stood as a model of socialist progress. The other is in Xiaopu village 小堡村, a barren stretch of land in Songzhuang town 宋庄镇, east of metropolitan Beijing. Initially set up by independent artists, the two art communities developed in much the same way as Yuanmingyuan Artist Village and attracted large numbers of artists from all over China. However, unlike Yuanmingyuan, these two art communities were not dismantled by the police and were instead officially recognized as Beijing's art districts.
Figure 1: Factory 798 and Songzhuang Art Districts
Contemporary Chinese arts burgeoned in the 1980s alongside China's economic reform and opening-up. Given the politically sensitive aspect of some of their work, contemporary artists are generally viewed as troublesome by the political authorities. Politically and socially marginalized, artists have often lived together on the fringes of society in artist villages (huajiacun 画家村), where they have frequently faced the threat of being displaced, either owing to political repression or urban renewal. This article examines why political decisions about the art community have so profoundly changed, from ordering the demolition of Yuanmingyuan Artist Village to preserving the Factory 798 and Songzhang art districts. How has the Chinese state, despite becoming more tolerant of artists, remained in control, and what are the implications of the story of contemporary Chinese arts on state–society relations in China?
Relying on an analysis of contemporary Chinese arts, this article speaks to broader questions regarding political control and artistic freedom. It is also a search for the meanings of state resilience and state–society relations in the context of globalization. My argument, in brief, is as follows. Chinese artists are empowered by globalization in that the government has changed its attitude towards the art community from recurrent suppression to limited tolerance in order to create a better global image for itself. Meanwhile, the government implements innovative mechanisms to control the location, publication and production of the arts. These mechanisms enable the government to minimize the influence of artists and their artworks as a potential and collective source of political challenge. As a result, the process of globalization creates a firewall, which facilitates the authoritarian state in global image-building and simultaneously mitigates the impact of global forces on domestic governance. This firewall illustrates how globalization – often thought to undermine state sovereignty – can, under certain circumstances, aid the process of state formation. It also shows how readily subversive art, when skilfully managed, can serve the very powers it challenges.
This account of contemporary Chinese arts draws primarily on nine months of fieldwork in Beijing from June 2010 to August 2011, during which time I conducted more than 50 interviews with Chinese officials, artists, local residents and visitors to the art districts. Besides conducting interviews, I also regularly visited the art districts and attended art events held in the areas. Finally, I have supplemented fieldwork with extensive archival research on government reports, local newspapers and professional journals.
Art District: Not for Art's Sake
Ever since Plato urged the banning of artists from the ideal republic, and probably earlier, there has been tension between art and politics.Footnote 1 The scepticism displayed by artists regarding the justification of the existing political and social orders often causes fear, distrust and resentment among ruling elites, especially in non-democratic states. Fascist governments, dictatorships, and the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union have all imposed rigorous restrictions on writers and painters and have demonstrated a leaning towards puritanism in the arts.Footnote 2 The Chinese Communists adopted the Soviet system for the arts after 1949. This system constituted a complete mobilization and total control of the arts and allowed no room for private or unofficial art. However, the status quo was challenged by the emergence of contemporary Chinese arts in the 1980s. Drastic socio-economic transformation has bred a generation of more creative, more critical, more sophisticated and less dogmatic artists, whose art is often political.Footnote 3
The relationship between the Chinese state and contemporary Chinese arts has to be understood against a background of globalization. Contemporary Chinese artists have long been marginalized by the government because many of their works deviate from the mainstream political ideology. Nevertheless, the increased popularity of their work on the international art market in recent years has brought with it global recognition. As a social group empowered by globalization, contemporary Chinese artists present potential challenges to the political autonomy of the state and raise serious questions about state–society relations in the context of globalization.
The impact of globalization on the political autonomy of nation states remains the subject of great debate. Globalist theorists believe that globalization is eroding the capacity of nation states to act independently in the articulation and pursuit of domestic and international policy objectives. They claim that the state has become a fragmented policymaking arena, permeated by transnational networks (governmental and non-governmental) as well as by domestic agencies and forces.Footnote 4 Sceptics, by contrast, contend that nation states remain robust and play a central role in domestic governance. In particular, they emphasize that politics defines how global pressures are treated, and that domestic politics and political institutions serve as filters that determine what effect globalization really has and how well various countries adapt to it.Footnote 5
Building upon the critical perspective on globalization, this article seeks to demonstrate that globalization is not a one-way street, but rather an interactive process between the local and the global. While globalization presents challenges to state autonomy by empowering various transnational and domestic agencies, states have maintained high levels of resilience. They are able to mediate the challenges through innovative mechanisms of control defined by local conditions. By highlighting the state as an autonomous actor exercising power within its own limits, this article echoes the theory of embedded autonomy.Footnote 6 However, it breaks new ground by exploring how globalization empowers domestic agencies and thus places constraints on state intervention. This article aims to reinvestigate the strength and the limits of state capacity, and reconceptualize the form and dynamics of state–society relations in the context of globalization.
State–society relations is one of the most important topics in the scholarship of Chinese politics. A number of studies depict a more pluralistic Chinese society by highlighting the diversification of social forces and their various channels of expression.Footnote 7 Studies on China's art districts hold similar views. They consider these art districts as global spaces facilitating consumer culture and artistic freedom.Footnote 8 In this article, I question the notion of an increasing pluralization in Chinese society. As the theory of authoritarian resilience demonstrates, the Chinese state maintains effective social control, despite increased domestic and international challenges.Footnote 9 Evidence from this article supports the theory by showing how the Chinese state uses innovative mechanisms of control to tame a particular kind of expression, by artists.
Artists and art districts are often at the fore of urban changes. Scholars of urban development have long paid attention to how art districts became a cultural strategy for urban growth and place-marketing in a post-industrial context.Footnote 10 More recent literature presents art districts as a global space that helps cities attract tourists and promote cultural consumption.Footnote 11 These studies provide a foundation for examining the role of arts in the development of local communities and larger metropolitan areas in China. However, they overemphasize the role of capital and neglect the part politics plays in art-led urban change. At the same time, these studies tend to oversimplify art districts across cities as global spaces sharing look-alike qualities, but overlook the different processes of space formation and the different purposes art districts serve. This article seeks to fill the gaps by showing how political interests and local conditions shape the global cultural space in Beijing.
The rest of the article explains how the Chinese government implements innovative mechanisms of control, including districting, quarantine and co-optation, to control the location, publication and production of the arts. Districting is about controlling the location of arts. The government designates certain areas as art districts in order to influence the spatial allocation and daily activities of artists through planning and leasing policies. Two art districts in Beijing, Factory 798 and Songzhuang, are discussed in detail. Both places saw the spontaneous growth of underground art communities to begin with, but the space was subsequently taken over by the government as officially recognized art districts. Quarantine is about controlling the publication of arts. The government controls the channels of art exhibition and circulation so that politically controversial works are “quarantined domestically” and “for export only.” Cooperation is about controlling the production of arts. By recruiting leading artists into official art institutions and giving them respectful titles, the government influences the work of the artists and, through them, reinforces its control over the entire art community.
Factory 798: Chairman Mao's Legacy
Factory 798 is the largest segment of 718 Joint Factory (718 lianhe chang 联合厂), also known as the North China Wireless Joint Equipment Factory (Huabei wuxiandian lingbujian chang 华北无线电零部件厂), located in Chaoyang district 朝阳区 in the north-east of Beijing. This huge secretive factory complex was built under Chairman Mao in the 1950s in order to produce advanced technology for the Chinese military. The complex was designed by East German architects in the Bauhaus style and the construction was supported by Chinese and Soviet funds.Footnote 12 As the biggest production site of electronic components in Asia, the factory was considered to be a showcase of China's achievements in industrialization and modernization in the early years of the People's Republic, as well as a symbol of international socialist cooperation.
Factory 798 began to fall into decline in the 1980s with the implementation of economic reforms. Deindustrialization took place in Beijing in the 1990s and precipitated the closure of many factories in the city. In 2000, Factory 798 was downgraded from a state-level SOE to a municipal-level SOE, named Beijing Seven Stars Group (Beijing qixing jituan 北京七星集团), which specialized in high-tech electronics.Footnote 13 By 2001, Seven Stars had closed several factories and laid off around 15,000 of its 20,000 workers.Footnote 14 In order to provide pensions for the workers, it began to lease out the empty factory space for additional revenue.
After the Yuanmingyuan Artist Village was broken up by the government, some artists, attracted by the huge spaces and low rent, moved into empty workshops in Factory 798. The Bauhaus-styled workshops are enormous cathedral-like spaces, with swooping arched ceilings. The spacious interiors, the natural light streams and the crispness of this “form follows function” design render the workshops a perfect venue for art studios and exhibition halls. Legacies from the socialist era remain in the workshops – machines stand rusting in the corners and gigantic slogans such as “Long Live Chairman Mao!” printed in red, still adorn the walls. As can be seen in Figure 2, the visual effect is stunning when avant-garde artworks are exhibited in this obsolete Maoist factory setting.
Figure 2: Factory 798 Art District
As the number of art galleries and studios inside Factory 798 quickly multiplied,Footnote 15 the area began to attract media and international attention. It has become an icon of not only contemporary Chinese arts but also the rise of Beijing as a global city. In 2003, Newsweek ranked Beijing as the 12th “world city,” with the existence of the art community at Factory 798 being considered a significant contributor to Beijing's global status. In the same year, Time Magazine selected Factory 798 as one of the world's “Top 22 most vibrant art districts.” Many foreign officials visited Factory 798, including Viviane Reding, the European Union's minister of culture, who cited the area as proof that China was opening up, much to the delight of Chinese politicians.Footnote 16
Despite the flourishing art community, Seven Stars planned to raze the area and build a high-tech park in order to maximize its profits. The leases granted to the majority of the artists were only for three to five years and were supposed to come to an end in 2005. In 2003, Seven Stars stopped issuing new leases to artists and began to prepare for demolition.Footnote 17 The artists launched a widely reported campaign to prevent the area from being demolished. In 2004, Factory 798-based artist, Li Xiangqun 李向群, also a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (Zhongyang meishu xueyuan 中央美术学院) and a representative in the People's Congress of Beijing, tabled a motion with the municipal government to preserve the factory as an art district.Footnote 18 After lengthy debate and a long wait, the motion was eventually supported by the municipal government.
It is important to note that the national government plays a pivotal role in preserving the factory. Li Changchun 李长春, one of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee, had a direct impact on the decision. As China's “propaganda chief,” Li is in charge of issues related to the arts, media and publishing. When asked to offer an opinion on the situation at Factory 798, Li's only response was, “kan yi kan, lun yi lun, guan yi guan 看一看，论一论，管一管,” which can be translated as: have a look, have a discussion, and have regulation.Footnote 19 This concise yet vague statement shows that, while the government is inclined to protect the art district from being demolished, it is still wary of the art community and does not have a clear plan on how to deal with the area.
An artist who was one of the first settlers at Factory 798 and a leading figure in the preservation campaign explained why the government decided to save the area:
Contemporary art has long been considered by the Chinese leaders as flood and beast, as a tool of the West to subvert the Chinese government. But things changed after Beijing won the Olympic bid. The government needed such a place to create a more open-minded, tolerant image for itself. It also became more confident after the successful bid. It realized the threat of contemporary art is not as big as it imagined, and that art can actually be used for political purposes. But the government still maintains huge degrees of wariness towards contemporary arts and artists.Footnote 20
The quote reveals that the image value of the art community plays an important role in the preservation of the factory. Global events, such as the Olympics, reinforce the need of the state to build a good image for itself through the creation of a global cultural space.
In 2006, Factory 798 was officially designated as a Cultural Creative Industry Cluster (wenhua chuangyi chanye jijuqu 文化创意产业积聚区). The decision later became part of the municipal agenda of promoting creative industries. To supervise activities in the art district, a management office was created in 2006 under the direction of Beijing's municipal department of propaganda. This office exercises censorship over art exhibitions and activities taking place in the art district to ensure that they are in accordance with the mainstream political ideology.Footnote 21 For example, the office took steps to ban the Dashanzi International Art Festival (Dashanzi guoji yishujie 大山子国际艺术节), the first and only independent art festival in Beijing run by artists in Factory 798. The office instead launched the 798 Art Festival and declared it to be the only legal art festival in the district. By depriving the artists of the right to organize their own art festivals, the office restricts the opportunities for artists to mobilize resources and social forces, and thus limits any potential challenge to the political regime.
The power of land leasing is in the hands of Seven Stars. Through a land-leasing office, the SOE exercises its complete discretion on issues like who can be admitted as tenants and at what price. Given that Seven Stars gave up the more profitable high-tech park plan to accommodate the city's demand for an art district, this arrangement provides a way for the city to compensate the SOE financially.Footnote 22 With no governmental regulation in place, land leasing in the art district has become a lucrative sideline for the SOE and the price of leases has rocketed. Accelerated by unregulated subcontracting, the cost of leasing space at Factory 798 increased sevenfold within five years, from 0.65 yuan per square metre per day in 2001, to 5 yuan per square metre per day in 2006.Footnote 23 Many artists, including some of the founding members of the community, can no longer afford the rent and have had to move out of the district.
Over the years, Factory 798 has developed into a popular site for the arts and entertainment. The number of art galleries and studios increased from 22 in 2003 to 398 in 2008, outstripping many art districts in the world.Footnote 24 Some internationally renowned art institutions, such as the Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation and the Pace Gallery, opened branches in Factory 798, thus enhancing the global status of the district. Besides art exhibitions, a variety of commercial activities take place in the art district, including company launch ceremonies, product advertising and marketing events, fashion shows and movie premieres. Hosting these activities boosts the incomes of the land-leasing office and individual gallery owners but impinges on the art space.Footnote 25 Factory 798 has also become a tourist hotspot.Footnote 26 Some tourist guide books list it as one of the “three must sees” in Beijing, along with the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. Many other leisure amenities, including restaurants, cafes, bars and boutique shops, have sprung up in the area, furthering turning Factory 798 into a tourist sight.
Songzhuang: Art in the “Countryside”
Songzhuang town is in Tongzhou district 通州区, an eastern suburban district of metropolitan Beijing, bordering Hebei province and Tianjin. Although Songzhuang is only 20 kilometres away from the city centre, its main means of production was agriculture and the area was considered by Beijing residents as “countryside.” In recent years, Songzhuang's country image has been transformed into that of a new artistic hub. The town government devised a plan to develop creative industries and proposed to build the largest art district in China.
Long before the town government launched its plan to develop Songzhuang into an art district, artists had already begun to settle in Xiaopu village, one of Songzhuang's 47 villages. The name Xiaopu literally means little blockhouse and refers to the village's location between the two main rivers flowing through Beijing, the Chaobai river 潮白河 and the Wenyu river 温榆河. Owing to Xiaopu's location, the land is very sandy and not suited to agriculture. Consequently, Xiaopu was the poorest village in Songzhuang, with an annual agriculture output of less than a fifth of any other village.Footnote 27 However, Xiaopu's depressed economic situation soon changed after the arrival of artists in 1994.
Facing constant harassment by the police in the early 1990s, artists in Yuanmingyuan Artist Village began to look for a new base. Xiaopu provided an ideal environment because of the availability of large, cheap-to-rent space, the relatively more relaxed political atmosphere in rural areas, and its close proximity to the city.Footnote 28 In order to rent a place in Xiaopu, artists needed the permission of the village committee (cunweihui 村委会). Village committees are self-governance bodies directly elected by villagers, similar to street committees in urban areas, and are headed by a Communist Party secretary. Although the village committee is not legally considered as a level of government, it makes decisions about major issues in the village. The Party secretary of Xiaopu, Cui Dabai 崔大柏, described the situation in 1994:
A villager told me some guy wanted to buy his house for 5,000 yuan, so I said hurry up and sell it. The village committee does not interfere in villagers' land leasing or house selling [arrangements]. We just hold meetings to set the minimum price, 1,000 to 2,000 yuan for a house. It is great if the price is higher than that, but I won't sign if it is lower than that. As for who the buyers are, I don't care. I just heard that those folks who came here to buy houses were painters. What is contemporary art? Never heard of it.Footnote 29
Apparently, Cui allowed the artists to move in because he wanted to boost the villagers' incomes through land sales or leasing. He admitted afterwards that he had had no idea what had happened at Yuanmingyuan. However, he claimed that even if he had known about the situation there, he would still have done the same: “I simply wanted the villagers to earn more money. There are folks who wanted to rent the houses in the village, and without agent fees. This is the easiest deal. Why not go for it?”Footnote 30
The village committee played a pivotal role in the growth of the artist community. With the demolition of Yuanmingyuan Artist Village, more artists moved into Xiaopu. Inevitably, their arrival drew the attention of the police. Both town and district officials considered the increased number of artists as a potential source of social unrest. In 1997, Tongzhou district listed Xiaopu as one of the most potentially dangerous public security hotspots in the district. As the Party secretary of Xiaopu, Cui was required to report regularly on the artist community to the director of Tongzhou's Party political legal committee. Despite the political pressure, Cui decided to keep the artist community in order to retain the revenue from land leases. He used his political and personal influence to shield the artists from harassment by police and government officials.Footnote 31 Under the protection of the village committee, the artist community quickly grew in Xiaopu and significantly contributed to increased local revenue. By 2004, agriculture was no longer Xiaopu's primary production activity and a large number of villagers were able to stay home and live off their income from leasing land.Footnote 32
Impressed by the increases in Xiaopu's revenues, the town government had a change of heart and no long considered the community of artists as a threat to public safety; instead it viewed the burgeoning community as a source of economic growth and decided to place it under its control. In 2004, the town government proposed the strategy of “developing the town with culture” (wenhua xingzhen 文化兴镇) and formulated an action plan for 2004–2020. In 2005, it designated an area of 14.6 square kilometres south of the town, including Xiaopu village, as a development site for the creative industry. It is the town government's ambition to expand the art district from Xiaopu to the surrounding areas and create the largest art district in China.Footnote 33
As in many other rural and peri-urban areas across China,Footnote 34 the town government's plan to increase revenue through alternative land use is leading to the rapid urbanization of Songzhuang. The villagers' land has been taken over by the town government, thereby converting it from collective to public ownership. This land then becomes eligible for redevelopment.Footnote 35 Villagers' houses are being demolished and the villagers are being relocated to high-rise apartment buildings. A total of 12 villages housing 17,995 villagers are affected by the development plan.Footnote 36 After the clearance of the site, the plan is to construct art studios and galleries to host various art activities and installations (see Figure 3). Meanwhile, various creative industries, including animation and movie production, are being developed within the art district.
Figure 3: Shangshang Art Museum, Songzhuang Art District
The main government agency in charge of the development of the art district is Songzhuang Cultural Creative Industry Cluster Administrative Commission (Songzhuang wenhua chuangyi chanye jijuqu guanli weiyuanhui 宋庄文化创意产业积聚区管理委员会), headed by the associate Party secretary of Songzhuang town. Since government agencies are not allowed to participate in market activities, a town government-owned company, Songzhuang Cultural Creative Industry Cluster Development Company (Songzhuang wenhua chuangyi chanye jijuqu kaifa gongsi 宋庄文化创意产业积聚区开发公司), was created in 2009 to manage the redevelopment. Although it is a legally registered, independent company, the main stakeholders of the company are government officials.Footnote 37 Such an arrangement is called “one team, two titles” (yi tao banzi, liang kuai paizi 一套班子，两块牌子), and is a strategy widely used in urban development in China that enables public officials to conduct market activities while monopolizing public resources.
The non-governmental organization, Songzhuang Association for the Promotion of Arts (Songzhuang yishu cujinhui 宋庄艺术促进会), was created in 2005 with the mission of providing services to artists. As with any civic organization in China, the key personnel of the association are governmental officials and the real function of the association is to monitor the activities of artists and reinforce political control.Footnote 38 Government-sponsored art festivals are held by the association every year, and monitored by police officers in uniform and plain-clothes. According to the artists, the art festivals are not places for them to engage with one another socially or exchange ideas, but are merely showcases through which the local government promotes the district's “brand” and the sale of artworks. As one artist put it, “the art festival in Songzhuang is purely government behaviour, for the sake of advertising only, just as some places host water melon festivals if they grow good water melons, cucumber festivals if they grow good cucumbers.”Footnote 39
Promoted by the town government, the art district is growing rapidly. By the end of 2008, there were more than 3,000 artists living in Songzhuang, with nearly 900 of them in Xiaopu. The mushrooming of art galleries and studios facilitates the development of many service sectors, including restaurants, supermarkets, art supply stores and framing shops. These industries contribute to the growth of the local economy and draw a large number of people from outside the town to work and live there. As the vibrant centre of the art district, Xiaopu has become the most affluent village of Songzhuang.Footnote 40 Villagers joke that nowadays they no longer grow potatoes or peanuts; they grow arts. Similar to Factory 798, rents in Songzhuang have skyrocketed. Approximately 50 to 60 per cent of the artists cannot afford to stay there for more than two years. Some of them are forced to move to cheaper land outside of the art district, where they usually are only able to stay for a short duration owing to the pressures of urban renewal.
As government-controlled art districts, both Factory 798 and Songzhuang risk becoming entirely planned environments and losing their authenticity. In Factory 798, Seven Star Group's attempts to maximize economic returns from land leasing have caused the rapid commercialization of the cultural space. The focus of the art district is increasingly shifting from art production and exhibitions to commercial events and entertainment. There is the danger that the district will become a theme park for consumption, where artists are marginalized by cultural entrepreneurs. In Songzhuang, the town government's plan to build the largest art district in China has resulted in accelerated urbanization. The wholesale approach of relocating the villagers and redeveloping the rural land destroys the spontaneous, symbiotic relationship between the artists and the local community. Although villagers receive a one-off compensation payment when they give up their land, no employment opportunity or welfare benefit is offered to them. Hence, the art-led redevelopment could lead to a series of social problems in the long run.
Quarantining Contagious Art
While the strategy of districting allows the government to control the spatial allocation and daily activities of artists, quarantine and co-optation enable the government to restrict the creativity of artists by controlling the publication and production of their works. The content of artworks is often subject to political control in authoritarian regimes. For example, socialist realism, created in the 1930s, became the only officially approved form of art in the Soviet Union where artists were called upon to depict and glorify the proletariat's struggle towards socialist progress.Footnote 41 As with other authoritarian regimes, the Chinese government has set out clear criteria on what type of art it favours. An artist explained the Chinese government's preferences:
In China, [President] Hu Jintao said art production should take the path of realism, which means artists should reflect the bright side of life, not the dark side, not the “unharmonious.” That is to say, everything, including art production, should serve the goal of building a “harmonious society.” The sarcastic, hyperbolic style of art production might be appealing in Western society, but it is not welcomed in China.Footnote 42
The slogan of “building a harmonious society” (jianshe hexie shehui 建设和谐社会) was coined by the government during the 2005 National People's Congress to emphasize the importance of maintaining balance and harmony at the societal level. However, it has been criticized by many independent intellectuals and social activists as government rhetoric to shut down different voices and control the discontents.Footnote 43 It is evident from the quote that the government is concerned about the social mobilization function of art. By incorporating art production into the scheme of “building a harmonious society,” the government is attempting to turn art into a device to maintain social and political stability, rather than a weapon used to provoke political dissatisfaction and challenge the status quo.
Despite the government's criteria for artworks, Chinese artists enjoy more freedom in art production today than did their East European counterparts during the communist era. They can address political issues in their works as long as they do not cross the “red line,” that is to say, that they do not explicitly condemn the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or its top leaders.Footnote 44 However, although they are granted much artistic freedom, the government effectively controls the channels through which art is published, exhibited and circulated. In other words, although Chinese artists can produce politically controversial artworks, there are few chances for them to exhibit or circulate the works domestically and so their works can have little impact on Chinese society.
A good case in point to demonstrate the power of the censors is the 20th Anniversary Celebration of Contemporary Chinese Arts, held in Beijing in 2009. Sponsored by the Hong Kong-based China Contemporary Art Foundation, the event was by far the largest contemporary art exhibition in mainland China. Part of the programme was the screening of a documentary entitled “Seven sins” in the Beijing Today Art Museum. The documentary reviews seven performance artworks, created by contemporary Chinese artists in the 1980s, which sent shock waves through the Chinese art world at that time. On 5 February 2009, an hour before the first screening was due to take place, propaganda officials arrived at the museum and asked to preview the documentary. After the preview, the documentary was allowed to run only once, and with many important parts being fast forwarded. It was then banned from the event. Many people who came to watch the documentary left disappointed.Footnote 45 Clearly, the Chinese state not only kept a close eye on the art event but also was proactive in its efforts to minimize the influence of any politically controversial artworks on the public.
Many Chinese artists have experienced “quarantine” in that their artworks are vetoed by the censors and not allowed to be displayed publicly. Huang Rui 黄锐, a celebrated artist and a founding father of the artist community in Factory 798, was forced to put the centrepiece of his first solo exhibition in mainland China in 2006 into storage. It is a Cultural Revolution slogan made up of banknotes, all bearing Mao's portrait. Wu Wenjian 吴文建, a Beijing artist who used the naïve style of painting to depict the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, had to follow police orders and remove politically sensitive works from his exhibition in the Factory 798 art district.Footnote 46 Zhang Huan 张洹, a renowned Shanghai and New York-based performance artist, had his 2008 retrospective show at the Shanghai Art Museum cancelled by the local government, with no reason given.Footnote 47 These are just a few examples to illustrate how artistic freedom is constrained by political censorship in China.
In an interview, an artist and gallery owner at Factory 798 related the following story. In 2010, the artist finished a series of photographs on prostitution in China. The images depict a prostitute standing naked with different groups of men in various apparel to show that prostitution has become a serious social problem in China that involves different social groups, from poor migrant workers to corrupt government officials. Prostitution is a taboo subject in public discussion in China as the government deems it to be a “dark side” that is intrinsic to the “polluted capitalist society,” and therefore it does not fit into the “harmonious society” of China. Thus, the artist lamented, his work was quarantined:
This kind of work cannot be publicized in China. There is absolutely no way for me to advertise it in any newspaper or magazine. The only thing I can do is to display it in my own gallery. Even the display was quite sensitive at the beginning. People from the management office came here and looked at my work for a long time. They obviously understood the political implication of my work, but I tried to make it as implicit as possible, so eventually they thought it was fine to just show it here.Footnote 48
Although prostitution is a controversial topic for the government, it is not as politically sensitive as other subjects such as the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Incident, or the evaluation of major Party leaders. This largely explains why the artist was allowed to display his photographs. However, the quarantine mechanism is manifest in the fact that he could display the photographs nowhere else but in his own gallery and that all avenues for advertising or publicizing the photographs were closed to him.
Whereas police and propaganda officials keep a close watch on various art exhibition venues and publication outlets, art districts provide the censors with convenient access to monitor the artists and their works. According to an artist in Songzhuang, the police keep detailed records of all “problematic artists” in the area. Stricter censorship is enforced in art districts during major holidays and events. During Labour Day and National Day, for example, police officers visit the artists' studios before the crowds of visitors arrive. They check the artwork hanging on the walls, and if they find anything problematic, the artist is told to “turn it around” or “cover it up” so that these works are not on public view.Footnote 49 Given that the channels for publishing, exhibiting and circulating art are under state control, many artists have to send their work overseas in order to reach a broader audience.Footnote 50 As a result, most politically-charged works become “quarantined domestically” and “for export only.”
The Chinese government has exercised strict censorship and created a firewall in not only contemporary arts but also in other art forms, such as literature, film and music, that address politically sensitive topics such as the Cultural Revolution and AIDS.Footnote 51 Yan Lianke 阎连科, one of China's most popular contemporary novelists, has had several of his released novels recalled and prohibited from publication and distribution by the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee. To combat this situation, Yan's solution is to write two versions of a novel: he waters down controversial sections for Chinese readers – and Party watchdogs – while giving full rein to his provocative imagination for editions to be published abroad and outside the censor's grasp. A Washington Post article has commented that Yan's “strategy” illustrates the tragic impact of censorship in China: it not only shackles the talent and freedom of thousands of artists like Yan, but also deprives the right of the country's 1.3 billion people to enjoy the full bloom of their culture.Footnote 52
Co-opting the Rebels
Although the contemporary Chinese art scene emerged in the early 1980s, it has only been formally recognized by the government recently. For decades, contemporary Chinese artists were marginalized domestically and their works were considered “illegal.” In 2009, the Chinese Academy of Contemporary Arts (Zhongguo dangdai yishu yuan 中国当代艺术院) was founded by the government as the first national institute on contemporary arts. This landmark event in the history of contemporary Chinese art symbolizes the state's official recognition of this art genre.
The Chinese Academy of Contemporary Arts comes under the umbrella of the Chinese National Academy of Arts (Zhongguo yishu yanjiu yuan 中国艺术研究院), the only national research institute on art. Supervised by the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee and the Ministry of Culture, the Academy of Contemporary Arts functions like a semi-governmental agency. According to the academy's official website, the mission of the institution is to promote the research, education and production of contemporary Chinese art.Footnote 53 Luo Zhongli 罗中立, one of China's leading realistic painters, was appointed president of the academy. At the opening ceremony of the academy, Luo gave a speech in which he emphasized that contemporary Chinese artists will use state ideology as their guideline and strive to create contemporary artworks “with Chinese character.”Footnote 54
As soon as the academy was founded, 20 nationally and internationally renowned contemporary Chinese artists were appointed as academicians.Footnote 55 Many of the artists, including Yue Minjun 岳敏君, Fang Lijun 方力钧, Zhang Xiaogang 张晓刚 and Zeng Fanzhi 曾梵志, are leading proponents of political pop (zhengzhi bopu 政治波普)Footnote 56 and cynical realism (wanshi xianshi zhuyi 玩世现实主义),Footnote 57 and their work had in the past been criticized by the China Artists Association (Zhongguo meishujia xiehui 中国美术家协会)Footnote 58 for distorting China's image. While the appointed artists all expressed the similar wish that the academy would promote the development of contemporary Chinese arts, their reactions to their new posts seemed complex and diverse. Zeng Fanzhi said that he felt “complicated” about becoming part of the academy, because he had always worked as an independent artist and did not imagine the state would pay attention to him. Another artist and academician, Zhou Chunya 周春芽, claimed that the appointment would not have any impact on his work, but he admitted that “everyone joined the academy for different purposes.”Footnote 59
By officially recognizing contemporary Chinese arts, the creation of the academy seems to be a major step towards enhancing the political and social status of the art community. However, it is considered by many artists as a government strategy to co-opt the leading artists and reinforce the state's control over the entire art community. As one artist put it:
Contemporary art in fact has not been upgraded from something outside the political regime to something inside. What the government has done [to contemporary arts] is like how the Jade Emperor (yuhuang dadi 玉皇大帝) tamed the Monkey King (Sun Wukong 孙悟空): he gave him the title of “Bi Ma Wen 弼马温.” The Monkey King thought it was the title of a prestigious office and was very happy. But, in the end, he realized it was nothing; it was just a trivial position to take care of the Emperor's horses. Many artists come from the grassroots, so they consider recognition by the political regime important, and they are willing to accept the amnesty and enlistment.Footnote 60
In China, everyone knows the story of the Monkey King. Although the Monkey King is a mysterious figure with magic power, he is taken in by the tricks of the Jade Emperor. The metaphor implies the powerlessness of the artists in the face of political authority.
Another domestically successful artist expressed a similar view:
The government does not consider us as artists; it only considers people in the China Artists Association as artists. We are considered the rebels, like Robin Hood. The goal of establishing the Contemporary Art Academy is to offer an amnesty and enlistment to rebels. The academician is a very prestigious position, but there is one thing [once you are an academician], you cannot bad-mouth the CCP anymore. Those several leading artists are very influential: as long as they shut their mouths, the rest of the art community will be quiet. The artists who were appointed as academicians, such as Yue Minjun and Fang Lijun, have significantly changed the styles of their work. They no longer produce what they produced before.Footnote 61
The Robin Hood metaphor and amnesty comment demonstrate the tension between the Chinese state and the art community. However, as the artist reveals, the title of academician could mitigate this tension by bringing the appointed artists many benefits, such as fame, enhanced social status, better market prospects in China, and having their works adopted in art textbooks. Given this package of rewards, it is unlikely that these artists would present any more challenges to the political authority.
It is a subjective topic to discuss and explain the changes in artists' works. One of the academicians mentioned above, Yue Minjun, has long been a star of the contemporary Chinese art scene. As a major cynical realist, Yue is best known for his large-scale paintings depicting his own smiling face. One of his early works, “Execution” (1995), is widely seen by art critics as a reflection of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident. The work is a satirical pop art-like version of Manet's “Execution of Maximilian” and Goya's “The Third of May 1808,” both paintings made in response to the political events of their times. Despite the clear political implications of his early works, the disguised political criticism seems to have disappeared from Yue's recent works. Some of his new paintings are inspired by Christian iconography, including reinterpretations of the Annunciation and the Resurrection as biblical scenes either devoid of their characters or populated with repetitive images of the artist's signature grinning man. To quote one art critic, “30 years later, Yue Minjin's work exudes a sense of melancholy rather than cynicism.”Footnote 62
A similar detachment from political criticism can be observed in the recent works of other Chinese artists who were appointed as academicians, such as Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang and Zeng Fanzhi. Artists' works are shaped by a variety of factors; it would be too arbitrary to argue that the changes are caused by their new positions. However, the impact of their new status should not be underestimated. For contemporary Chinese artists who have long been marginalized in China, the appointment of academician at a prestigious national art institution gives them the social recognition that they have missed and enables them to become local celebrities in China. Such a change in their social status is likely to have an impact on how they perceive and interpret their relations with the state.
Conclusion
The state both needs and restricts creativity. Since the demolition of Yuanmingyuan Artist Village in the mid-1990s, the Chinese state has shown a greater degree of tolerance towards contemporary artists. Officially designated art districts have provided artists with a stable environment in which to live and work, and the newly created national art institution has enhanced their social status. Despite the policy changes, the state has not given up its hold over the art community. Instead, it has employed various innovative mechanisms to control the life and work of the artists. These mechanisms, implemented in contemporary art as well as in other art genres, enable the government to minimize the artists' potential to influence and motivate political challenges. At the same time, the mechanisms also allow the government to use the artists in its scheme to build a global image brand and economic growth. It is through these mechanisms that the authoritarian state remains in control while still allowing more freedom in society.
The story of contemporary Chinese arts demonstrates that globalization is an interactive process between the local and the global. On the one hand, globalization empowers Chinese artists by offering them a platform through which they can gain international recognition. With their enhanced international reputation and resources, the artists, along with their work, increase their potential to become a collective source of challenge to the political autonomy of the state. On the other hand, the Chinese state has not responded to the challenge passively. It maintains high levels of resilience and is able to mediate the challenges through innovative mechanisms of control. As a result, a firewall is created in the process of globalization, which facilitates the Chinese state in global image-building and simultaneously mitigates the impact of global forces on domestic governance. The creation of the firewall illuminates the way the authoritarian state has adopted more sophisticated methods of governance in response to the challenges of a more sophisticated society.
The recent global economic downturn has led to a decline in international investment in art and has led many Chinese artists to return to their domestic market. This change of circumstances has given the Chinese government even more power to exert its control over the artists. In 2011, internationally renowned dissident artist, Ai Weiwei 艾未未, was detained by the Chinese government for over two months without any official charges being filed. Ai differs from most Chinese artists because of his elite family background and his dual identity as both an artist and a political activist. He has been highly and openly critical of the Chinese government's stance on democracy and human rights. Although the detention of Ai is an extreme case, it shows that the Chinese government maintains a high degree of wariness towards the art community. The message of Ai's detention is clear: no one is immune from the control of the Chinese state, even if he is as internationally recognized as Ai Weiwei.
In the face of dislocations at home and declining markets abroad, many Chinese artists have begun to debate the future of contemporary Chinese art. Some are critical about the reuse of trademark art symbols created in the 1990s; they consider it as a sign that contemporary Chinese art has entered a bottleneck and that artists are losing their creativity. Others debate the value of artworks that make direct political statements; they question whether those works show the real concerns of Chinese society or are simply trying to catch the attention of foreign patrons. Some artists are interested in transcending old boundaries and moving beyond the Chinese context. However, they have yet to find new ways to establish a dialogue about art and politics, nationalism and internationalism, and peace and justice on the world stage. This is an exciting, and potentially confusing, time for both contemporary Chinese art and Chinese society.
