Auction sales in mainland China saw a mild recovery last year after two consecutive years of decline, but any hope for a return to the 2011 peak has been dampened by “chronic” non-payment and falling global demand for Chinese art and antiques, according to the latest Global Chinese Art Auction Market Report.

The annual report from artnet and the China Association of Auctioneers, which only provides data up to the end of 2016, also shows a sharp change in the pattern of spending in the Chinese art market. For the first time since the inaugural 2012 report, the mainland market has outperformed sales in overseas markets, which include Hong Kong.

Last year, mainland sales of Chinese art and antiques grew 7 per cent to 33.4 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion), while sales of the same categories overseas fell by 27 per cent year-on-year to US$1.9 billion. Since 2012, the overseas market had either grown more quickly or suffered less in a cooling market than in the mainland. For example, in 2015, the external market grew 14 per cent by sales value in contrast to a 19 per cent drop in the mainland.

Mainland auction houses have said that they are benefiting from Beijing’s crackdown on rampant capital outflow since 2015, a policy that keeps more money inside the mainland and which is showing no sign of being reversed, as companies such as Dalian Wanda, Anbang and Fosun International have recently been told to curb their overseas investments.

That is not to say that the mainland market is expecting to see another round of explosive growth. In response to the global financial crisis, the Chinese government launched a massive round of quantitative easing that sent the mainland auctions market to a high of 55.3 billion yuan (US$8.39 billion) in 2011. Last year’s slight recovery only takes it back up to 29.1 billion yuan, and it is flat when measured in dollar terms.