Alessandro Digaetano Photographer

Fan Di'an, director of the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), claims: "The government has decided to leave the issues of the art to the art, as an the economy market. So everybody can show any kind of art, the government doesn't care." Now China's gallery industry also ushered in its age of profit, and they would become the major force in the future to advance the contemporary art. The same for the Auction houses: Guardian Auction House initiated in Mainland China a special auction of oil paintings in 1994, which symbolized the beginning of a local second-order market for contemporary Chinese art. After that Poly and others also brought out their special oil painting auctions. The deal volume of Guardian's first auction was only 1.96 million RMB-yuan in 1994, whereas in 2006, the auction houses' spring auctions had approached hundreds of millions RMB-yuan. Contemporary Chinese art became the hotspot of world's attention in the last decades, even in auction area, a multi-party competing situation had formed, with Beijing and Hong Kong being centers, New York important observation window, and Taiwan, Shanghai the regional centers. And outside China as well. A few years ago Sotheby's did not even hold auctions of Chinese contemporary art. But the last spring auction in Hong Kong went very well and last year it sold nearly $200 million worth of Asian contemporary art, the bulk of it by Chinese artists. So, in September Sotheby's plans to sell more works at a New York auction. *** Local Caption *** The last bid to Guo Bochuan's "The Forbidden City". Evelyn Lin, Head of the Contemporary Chinese Art Department, Sotheby's China and Southeast Asia, said, "We're delighted with the results of today's sale, which was clearly demonstrates the continuing strength in the market for Chinese Contemporary Art. Further, our results show a market which is gaining in sophistication as collectors move beyond paintings and sculpture to compete and categories such as video and install