China's Evolving Art Industry

By Liang Sisi, Gary Hack, and Bian Lanchun

Most large Chinese cities have built high-profile opera houses, theaters, music halls, art museums, and history museums, all meant to signal their emergence as international cities. While the patronage grows modestly for these elite facilities each year, they remain largely empty holes in the centers of the largest cities.

Meanwhile, with less fanfare and often through grassroots efforts, creative districts are emerging in cities of all sizes. Beijing and Shanghai both have at least a dozen, and they have become among the liveliest spots in town. (For the nuts and bolts of arts and culture planning stateside, see "When Arts and Culture Take Center Stage," November 2015.)

Cities encourage them as replacements for old industries that have relocated or folded, leaving behind industrial structures with no obvious use. In other cases, creative districts are the result of sophisticated real estate strategies, and in still others they are promoted by outlying townships as a way to avoid their annexation by larger governments.

Behind all of these ventures is a growing appetite for art and experience, and rising incomes to support it. The design arts — graphics, fashion design, industrial design, architecture, commercial art, filmmaking, animation, digital design, and advertising — have become big business, and are promoted by local and provincial agencies. There is also a countercultural dimension to artistic work that appeals to young people and growing arts communities, constantly testing the margins of acceptable expression.

The trend continues even as the Chinese economy's rapid growth has slowed recently. According to China Annual Statistics 2015, the value added of China's formally organized cultural industries has doubled from 1,105 billion RMB in 2010 to 2,390 billion RMB in 2014.

Emergence of art districts

Creative districts flowered first in Beijing, something quite unexpected in this most conservative of Chinese cities. When heavy industry was purposely removed as a matter of city policy, what remained was a plentiful supply of old factory buildings and the need for a new economy. From 1985 to 2005, 286 industrial enterprises moved out of Beijing's center city, leaving more than 4.5 square miles of vacant sites in search of new uses.

The first art districts emerged spontaneously. By the late 1980s, some art college graduates, dissatisfied with the career opportunities assigned to them by the state, struck out on their own to create artworks that expressed their personal visions. They gathered in Loudou Bridge Village near the Old Summer Palace ruins (Yuanmingyuan), a culturally significant site.

Soon hundreds of poets, painters, musicians, and film workers arrived, and the area adopted the name Yuanmingyuan Artistic Village. However, after the avant-garde artworks ran afoul of mainstream socialist norms, the village was demolished; the artist group dissolved in 1995. Some artists moved to Songzhuang Village at the east edge of Beijing, while others scattered to other out-of-the-way locations, sowing the seeds of future arts districts.

With the construction of new campuses for Beijing art schools, including a large facility for the Central Academy of Fine Arts, faculty began searching for live-work space and galleries to mount ever more ambitious shows. In 1995, the dean of the Central Academy rented space for a personal studio in the largely abandoned 798 electronics factory — which once manufactured ordnance and, like all such factories, was referred to by a code number — and the sculpture department rented the nearby 706 factory warehouse to create and exhibit large works. An arts bookstore and coffee shop soon followed, and many other artists found space in the sprawling complex.

The area, soon known as the 798 Art Zone, had unique resources for artistic production and shows. Designed by the Bauhaus Architectural Institute of East Germany, many of the structures have tall, unobstructed spaces and glorious north-facing, barrel-vaulted skylights, ideally suited for the visual arts.

The road from electronics factory to arts zone was a bit bumpy. Consolidating the dozen or so factories in the area, the municipal government created the Seven Star Group, charged with rationalizing the future use of the buildings and vacant lands. Even as artists were flocking to the area and galleries were being established, some manufacturing remained, and longtime residents feared job losses.

Following protests against new arts conversions, Seven Star stopped leasing spaces for arts uses in 2003 and 2004. A media campaign and pleas from international cultural organizations ultimately turned the tide, and in 2006, the area was officially designated one of Beijing's 10 cultural and creative areas, and a government entity was formed to develop it.

No district anywhere has emerged as quickly as did this international art center. Abandoned factory buildings have been transformed into more than 400 museums, galleries, boutiques, and cafes. Empty lots and hidden courtyards are now settings for outdoor sculpture, fashion shows, and other events.

About 10 percent of the art institutions come from abroad, ranging from the world-class Pace Gallery Beijing to an outlet showcasing North Korean propaganda art. Some three million visitors, one-third of them foreign, visit each year, making the 798 Art Zone the third most visited destination in Beijing, after the Forbidden City and the Great Wall.

A strategy emerges

Other cities have followed a similar trajectory, encouraging arts districts adjacent to art academies. Near the Sichuan Art Academy in Chongqing, an abandoned tank factory has been converted into artist workspaces, and new studios and galleries occupy large warehouse and commercial structures along what is now called Art Street.

Within a three-square-kilometer (1.1-square-mile) area, Chongqing Huangjueping Art District has three public art galleries and more than 500 art studios. It has attracted 2,000-plus artists, as well as students and faculty from the art academy.

National decision makers have taken note of the art districts' successes. It is a more critical component of city planning and development.

In 2007, the General Office of the State Council published the first long-term plan on cultural construction in China, which covers nine fields: culture and creation, film production, publication, printing, advertising, performance art, art and exhibition, digital design, and animation. According to China Annual Statistics, the value added of China's formally organized cultural industries was 2,390 billion RMB ($376 billion), accounting for 3.76 percent of total GDP. (In the U.S., cultural industries make up about three percent of GDP value added.)

China's cultural entities grew by an average rate of nearly 25 percent from 2008 to 2010, twice the pace of China's GDP growth (12.6 percent), according to a Ministry of Culture report. None of these figures account for individual artists' production, which is largely off the balance sheets.

The 2009 Cultural Promotion Plan, China's specific plan on cultural industries, along with other official planning documents and activities, marks the cultural industry as one of China's strategic industries.

Conversion of the danweis

While the 798 Art Zone focused on the visual and plastic arts, the burgeoning demand for other creative services has also led to a wide variety of conversions of former industrial quarters. As older businesses declined, danweis — the self-contained, work-living-social service enclaves that were the fundamental form of organization from 1949 to 1995 — were allowed to lease all or part of their land and buildings to developers, and many seized the opportunity.

In Beijing, the Xinhua Printing House, a danwei established in 1949 to serve the local government's publications, occupied a key inner city site close to what is now becoming Beijing's financial district. While the residential areas remained, in 2010 the printing facilities were relocated to the outlying Yizhuang Economic Technical Development Zone, freeing a 10-acre site for redevelopment. Renamed the "Xinhua 1949" Cultural and Financial Innovation Center, it focused on design and media industries.

On-site factory buildings have been renovated for exhibition and trade uses; smaller structures are now creative studios and workshops; and the high-rise bookbinding and printing buildings on the east side of the site have been adapted for office buildings, including the headquarters of several state-owned enterprises promoting cultural development. A new performing arts space attracts people beyond the immediate community, and music production spaces provide an added dimension.

Among other danwei conversions is the 5.6-acre Beijing Vintage Creative District, located near Beijing's other new CBD. Starting in 2009, the Shouchuang Property Company began transforming a dozen industrial plants into showrooms, restaurants, retail boutiques, creative workshops, and media offices. A new art and media school was situated in one of the largest structures to serve as an engine for new enterprises, especially in fashion design and digital media. The Vintage Creative District is one of the few industrial-style landscapes remaining in central Beijing.

Perhaps the largest danwei conversion project in China is the Eastern Suburb Memory Innovation Center in Chengdu. The sprawling Hongguang electronic and military industrial factory has been reenvisioned as a creative campus focused on music industries.

The process of conversion was organized by a local government entity with major investments from the city and provincial governments. The 36-acre site today contains over two million square feet of buildings, three-quarters of it old factory space.

Anchoring the new district is China Mobile's wireless music base, which has in turn attracted other digital music enterprises. The area is home to recording and production spaces, performance venues, music festival venues, interactive experience outlets, music bars, and sound stages.

The center is organized along a main street lined with preserved artifacts from its industrial past: smokestacks, glassmaking equipment (for making the CRT tubes that were its staple), and propaganda slogans. Because more than 80 percent of the businesses are restaurants, music bars, and commercial entertainment spots, the site also draws throngs of visitors, especially on weekends.

Arts and real estate development

Private developers have caught on, creating a number of arts-themed developments that integrate galleries and working spaces for artists and designers in commercial development projects.

The Pingod Community, located just south of Beijing's CBD, is one example. Its developer, the Jindian Group, sought to create a distinct identity there by intertwining art and commercial uses with residential development and an art museum.

Reversing the usual new residential development pattern, the community has a central spine lined with buildings devoted to two or three stories of creative industries and businesses, topped by housing. Over one-third of the clients of the apartments are foreigners, and the loft and tall-height condos have attracted many middle-class artists.

A courtyard-style commercial street on the south side of the Pingod Community hosts many design workshops, art galleries, high-end restaurants, stylish bookstores, and luxury stores — as well as studios of well-known artists such as Chen Danqing and Fang Lijun.

Anchoring the area is the Today Art Museum, a leading contemporary art institution paid for and built by the Jindian Group. Pingod's success has encouraged developers in many cities to emulate this mix of commercial space and creative enterprises.

Township-based districts

Some of China's most ambitious creative districts have emerged in peripheral locations. Townships surrounding urban areas have a special status, dating from their roles as communes in the new socialist state.

As urban areas expand, many of them have been engulfed by massive development, with lands turned over to developers and residents left without jobs or resources. Several townships around Beijing have adopted a proactive strategy of attracting artists as a defense against displacement.

Hegezhuang Village is located outside of northeast 5th Ring Road, north of 798 Art Zone. In 2007, the village adopted a new land management strategy, labeled "Art+Land."

The village committee assembled cottages rented from villagers, redesigning them for artists as live-work and commercial spaces, and paying for the conversions with funds from local authorities, the village committee, and social investors. Farmers still own the houses, but they have assigned the management rights to a professional company, which subleases the renewed cottages to artists, private clubs, specialty restaurants, and art institutions.

The No. 1 Courtyard in Hegezhuang Village has become one of Beijing's special creative districts, with dozens of art galleries, private art centers, more than 100 artist studios, the well-known Orchard Restaurant, and luxury teahouses. That land management approach has successfully stopped the wave of high-rise construction that was threatening to engulf Hegezhuang.

After the demise of the pioneering Yuanmingyuan Artistic Village in 1995, many of its artists moved to Xiaopu Village in Songzhuang, an outlying township 20 kilometers (about 12 miles) east of central Beijing. There they created the Xiaopu Painter Village. It became a driving force in the development of the area.

The township lies beyond the area authorized for urban development, and was technically restricted to traditional agricultural and township-based industries. But the Xiaopu village committee and township created four development companies to foster development of an art district, residential area, industrial district, and commercial street.

Galleries, artists' studios, and commercial outlets followed, and a military industrial facility became live-work spaces. Initially, the status of artists was constantly under challenge, and on more than one occasion the Beijing government blocked the construction of housing on the grounds that it was inconsistent with the city's master plan.

In 2006, however, the Beijing government officially recognized Songzhuang as one (and the largest) of 10 culture and creative industry clusters. A government entity and development company were formed and put in charge of infrastructure, land development, and leasing sites to developers.

The results over the past decade: construction of a new art museum designed by DnA Design, expansion of the art exhibition center to more than one million square feet, opening an art sales area of 270,000 square feet, and creation of hundreds of private art galleries and 4,500 private workshops. More than 5,000 working artists now live in Songzhuang, and thousands of people are employed in ancillary industries from frame making to ceramics production to sales to logistics.

The area has begun to diversify by becoming a locus for film and animation. Dozens of movie stars have moved there. Songzhuang is best known for a huge annual art festival; overall, more than 500,000 visitors find their way to this remote location each year.

Songzhuang has an ambitious agenda for future development as well. A plan by Sasaki Associates identifies seven clusters of innovative activity for Songzhuang: culture, design, film animation, fashion, biotech/R&D, alternative medicine, interactive technologies, and a wide range of other experimental technologies. The aim is to stimulate creativity across many disciplines and endeavors.

The possibilities

As arts districts evolve, they can also destroy their original attraction for artists and makers. Sometimes the threats are external, as in the destruction of Beijing's first artists' village, but more often commercial success prices out the pioneers.

Very few working artists remain in the 798 Art Zone; commercial galleries and other paying tenants have displaced them. Even with international success (sometimes because of it), top artists face regular threats by cultural bureaus, otherwise known as censors, and many work in walled compounds out of public view.

A well-known Chinese magazine, New Weekly, in 2010 listed "20 Beijing Art Districts in Danger of Demise," which includes the No. 1 Courtyard in Hegezhuang Village, plus several emerging art districts. Even as Songzhuang has acquired its authorized cultural development status, Xiaopu Painters Village and other surrounding villages still risk being replaced with high-rise construction because of increasing land prices.

Change has come to the 798 Art Zone, too, which is now seen as more of an entertainment district than a creative center. Realizing that its identity is challenged, the art zone management, working with a Belgian philanthropist who owns a massive Chinese art collection, commissioned Sasaki to help solidify the zone as a major artistic force. The plan proposes, for the first time, coherent public-realm strategies, and new uses around the perimeter of the art zone that will diversify the area beyond its current attractions.

The real trick will be to find ways to ensure that maturing arts districts retain the quirky and unexpected qualities that drew artists and designers to them in the first place. Predictability is usually the enemy of creative places.

Liang Sisi is assistant professor of planning at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Bian Lanchun is a professor there and vice dean of the university's School of Architecture. Gary Hack is dean emeritus of the School of Design, University of Pennsylvania.

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Images: Top — To accommodate the creative industries that are moving in, new floors have been added to the massive shed of an adapted steel factory in the Redtown Creative Industry Area in Shanghai. Middle — The Arts Education District in Beijing's Songzhuang Culture and Creative District added new buildings in hopes of luring art schools to locate there. Bottom —A swordsman is surrounded in "Wolves are Coming" by Liu Ruowang in the 798 Art Zone. In the background is the Pace Gallery. The piece now has a new home on a New Zealand golf course. Photos by Gary Hack.

Illustration: The vision plan for the 798 Art Zone in Beijing includes a ring of more creative uses around the current zone. Map courtesy Sasaki Associates.