When the hammer came down on an abstract painting by Zao Wou-ki at a Sotheby's Hong Kong sale in October, the HK$69 million bid set a new auction record for the Chinese-French artist.
The colourful piece, 10.1.68 (1968), then made headlines again three months later, this time for a less celebratory reason: the mainland woman who bid for it, Ren Chunxia, failed to pay up.
She was not alone. In separate sales that same season, Ma Dong, who won three paintings including Self Portrait in the Yellow Mountains by master Chinese painter Zhang Daqian has yet to pay for any of them. His bids totalled to just under HK$50 million. Wang Yongjun also failed to pay HK$6.02 million after he successfully bid for a fine guan-type censer from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), which was part of the Meiyintang Collection of Chinese ceramics.
While Ren's case was fully settled this week, Ma and Wang are still being sued by Sotheby's for non-payment of the works.
False bidding among Chinese high rollers has come at a time when the mainland has become the world's biggest market for art and antiques. A report released earlier this month by The European Fine Art Foundation (Tefaf) showed that the Chinese share of the global art market rose from 23 per cent in 2010 to 30 per cent last year, pushing the United States, with 29 per cent, into second place for the first time.
'The powerful surge by China combined with a rise in fine-art sales, particularly in the modern and contemporary sectors, led to a continuing strengthening in the art and antiques market worldwide,' Tefaf said. 'Sales in 2011 rose by 7 per cent to Euro46.1 billion (HK$477 billion), an increase of 63 per cent from the market crisis of 2009.'