"China Cracks Down on Using Art for Corruption"
From Art Market Monitor:
China is getting serious about cracking down on abuses in the art
market. One of the government’s official outlets has this story railing
against corrupt officials who peddle their works of calligraphy to
disguise bribes:
Hu Zhangqing, former deputy governor of southeast Jiangxi
Province, was executed in March 2000 on a charge of corruption. In
1998, Hu’s works of calligraphy were sold in the price range between
3,000 yuan and 6,000 yuan (about US$480 to US$961). One of his
calligraphy works even had a price tag of 90,000 yuan (about US$14,425),
reported state-run People’s Daily on October 2014.
In 2010, during the trial of Wen Qiang, former deputy chief of police
in Chongqing in the southwest, one of the biggest debates was over the
authenticity of one of the paintings in his possession—said to be the
work of Zhang Daqian, considered one of the extraordinary Chinese
artists of the twentieth century. If it were authentic, the painting
would fetch a market price of 3.64 million yuan (about US$583 thousand)...MORE
