China's Glasnost

To be sure, Hu's no Gorby when it comes to politics. China's awakening--first economic and now cultural--has yet to transform its hidebound political system in any fundamental way. Artworks deemed overtly political may still be banned. And the same old subjects remain taboo: Taiwanese independence, ethnic tension, the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown and, above all, the legitimacy of Communist Party rule.

But Chinese authorities have become more aware of the costs of controlling creativity. "They know that if they shut down a show or arrest an artist, they're going to get lots of negative international media attention," says Robert Bernell, owner of the Beijing art-publishing house Timezone 8. Officials are also bowing to the realization that the Internet is impossible to control fully. Weblogs offer myriad new outlets for experimental writing. Online bulletin boards allow budding authors and artists to show their work, access international cultural news and critique one another.

Nowhere is the dynamism of avant-garde China more evident than at the former weapons factory in the Chaoyang district of Beijing known as Factory 798. The soaring Bauhaus-style structure now houses the country's largest single collection of private galleries and studios. What started as a funky, low-rent, grass-roots art enclave two years ago now hosts dozens of --cutting-edge shows a year and is home to international galleries run by collectors in London, Singapore, Tokyo and Berlin. "This is the only community of its kind in China," says Chaoyang district Mayor Chen Gang. "People are comparing it to New York's SoHo district."

The market for experimental works is booming, at home as well as abroad. Wary of both the mainland's stock market and its overheating real-estate sector, newly rich Chinese "are looking at art as an investment," says calligrapher and contemporary artist Wong Dongling. At contemporary-art galleries and auctions, individual pieces now sell for $2,000 to $100,000 each.

While most such works are displayed privately, government-sponsored venues are also beginning to test the limits of creative freedom. In mid-June a group of intellectuals, artists and photojournalists gathered at Shanghai's Duolun Museum of Modern Art to peer at artist He Chengbuo's nearly nude body bound with white duct tape--the first time the government had granted permission for a nude performance in an official public space. Beijing recently invested $18 million to renovate its National Art Museum, which now boasts several Picassos as well as works by Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns--all of which would have been banned during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.

Avant-garde exhibits and performance venues are popping up in smaller towns too. In early July the tradition-bound inland city of Xian--China's capital during the Tang dynasty--hosted an exhibit called "Is It Art?" that featured, among other things, a shirtless man suspended high in the air moving bags of cement around like a human crane. Designed to draw attention to the relationship between man and machine, the installation also critiqued China's relentless construction boom.