Save avant-garde art

Will what has happened to New York's artists happen to Beijing's avant-garde art community?

At the rate things are going, the answer is, unfortunately, yes. First, some background is in order.

While Beijing has always been an important visual arts center, the emergence of cutting-edge, avant-garde Chinese art is a relatively recent development in New China. It only dates back to the 1990s, when some leaders who had a taste for Western culture encouraged avant-garde art and architecture. At the end of the decade, the Ministry of Culture organized exhibitions showcasing the latest Chinese "New Wave" art at the Venice Biennale, a world showcase for modern art.

Over the past decade, Beijing's alternative art scene has exploded. The capital has won itself a well-deserved reputation for being a progressive arts center. New galleries displaying interesting avant-garde work have mushroomed. These include not only the well-known 798 Art Zone complex, housed in a warren of old factory buildings, but a slew of galleries and studios in the Chaoyang arts district east of the Fifth Ring Road.

However, vibrant artist colonies are typically short-lived. Indeed, in a most sorrowful of ironies, just as these communities begin to flourish, they simultaneously plant the seeds of their own destruction. New York City, the arts capital of my country, the US, is a case in point.

Following World War II, New York lost most of its small-scale manufacturing industry. This left warehouses and old factories vacant in neighborhoods like SoHo and the East Village in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn's Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). These buildings were initially cheap to rent and with their large floor plans, open spaces and huge windows, they were perfect for artists.

The presence of artists helped gentrify these neighborhoods, luring well-educated and affluent professionals, who were attracted by their creative energy and vibe.

However, this also acted as a magnet for real estate developers, who snapped up these buildings and turned them into upscale housing or removed them to make way for high-rise luxury towers. Artists were priced out of the very neighborhoods they helped revive.

This dynamic can be seen in Beijing's new avant-garde art hot spots, particularly in the 798 gallery complex. Rents there have skyrocketed, increasing tenfold since 2002-03, when artists first started moving in there. According to Liu Xiangqun, a Tsinghua University art professor, only a fifth of the founding artists are still there.

As these artists have moved out, 798 has taken on an increasingly commercial feel and is now filled with cafs, book bars and small chic stores. I still enjoy going there, but it has ceased being an outpost of really cutting-edge New Wave art.

As the area between the Fifth and Sixth ring roads becomes urbanized, more artists are being expelled from their homes and studios elsewhere in the Chaoyang arts district. For example, the visionary artist Ai Weiwei, who helped design the Bird's Nest, has been told by Caochangdi Village officials that his studio will soon be demolished. And in February, 20 artists protested strong-arm tactics used to get them move out of their suburban residential complex.

Can this dynamic be reversed? Fortunately, Beijing differs from New York in being a much bigger city with respect to size. The latter has largely run out of suitable, yet to be gentrified neighborhoods for artists to colonize. The most recent was the South Bronx. In the 1970s, it was a byword for urban blight, but it retained many old factory buildings and is just 20 minutes from Mid-town Manhattan. However, during the recent US housing boom at least, artists were being squeezed out of there as well, with many leaving the Big Apple for more affordable places to live and work.

By contrast, Beijing is a big sprawling city and many areas besides the Chaoyang arts district could serve as artists' colonies. In particular, there are surely large numbers of abandoned factories in western Beijing which were vacated when most heavy industry was relocated to Hebei province to improve the city's air prior to the Olympic Games.

Local authorities in these neighborhoods should be encouraged not only to set up new art districts, but also to take steps to ensure they are protected from predatory real estate developers.

More is at stake here than Beijing's future as an avant-garde arts center. A thriving arts scene is essential to make the city attractive for knowledge industry workers.

And the city will need to be able to lure these workers if it is to build up its high-tech and knowledge economy. Thus the health of Beijing's New Wave arts community is important for both cultural and economic reasons.