ALL-OUT war has, of course, been threatening for years. But the battle that finally seems to have broken out between Beijing and Shanghai for the coveted title of China's cultural capital has, as its curious catalyst, the mainland's first sought-after, state-backed international arts festival.
Last week, Vice-Minister of Culture Meng Xiaosi turned up in Hong Kong to announce to international press the launch of the annual event and to tell the world that Shanghai would be the permanent host of a festival jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and the Shanghai municipal government.
The festival, scheduled to run for the whole of November, will showcase 30 performing arts groups.
What conference organisers left out when announcing what amounts to a major step that the mainland has taken to further open up its arts world is that China's new top arts festival will coincide with Beijing's 2nd International Festival of Music.
This year's Beijing festival is twice as long as last year's, and will run from October 18 to November 19, leaving it substantially overlapping with the Shanghai festival.
But despite such an unfortunate clash, Beijing's arts community is outwardly defiant. Honorary president of the Central Conservatory Wu Zuqiang said that while he considered the new event a collaboration between the cultural ministry and Shanghai, 'it's not impossible sometime in the future we'll have our own state-sponsored international arts festival here in Beijing'.