Trade war? China’s oil painters focused on domestic battles as US tariffs loom
Artists less affected by tariffs than they would have been a decade ago when they relied on exports, as China moves away from manufacturing-heavy era
Painters in a southern Chinese “art factory” village, once known for exporting most of the world’s oil paintings, were largely resigned to the newest threat to their business: the US-China trade war.
The artists of the Dafen Oil Painting Village in Shenzhen, already battling rising costs and declining market demand, quietly worked their paintbrushes in alleys and factory-style workshops, with little indication of the spectre of 10 per cent duties from Washington on Chinese paintings.
Handmade paintings, artistic drawings and pastels were all on the list of US$200 billion worth of goods that could become subject to US tariffs threatened last week, in a dispute Beijing has called the “largest trade war in history”. The measures could come into effect by August.
But in Dafen – an artsy hub once responsible for mass-producing 60 per cent of oil paintings globally, many of them replicas of masterpieces – artists say barriers to the US will simply further encourage the shift since the 2008 financial crisis, from a reliance on Europe and the US to the burgeoning domestic market, driven partly by the consumption power of China’s growing middle class.
Artist-turned-entrepreneur Jin Zhong is chairman of the Shenzhen Shangyi Oil Painting Company, which owns a handful of galleries in Dafen. His gallery is one of 1,200 remaining in a village whose annual revenue was estimated at US$630 million in 2015, but he said business had been hard.