On 24 September 2021, the first NFT art gallery in mainland China, “Art Digital Force NFT Digital Gallery”, was opened at M50 in Shanghai. The gallery was created by China’s NFT art platforms, NFT art trusts and many NFT artists, which marks a new
phase in the history of NFT art in China. As an art space with screen displays as the main method of art exhibition, the gallery aims to bring a fresh art experience to the public who are less familiar with NFT art and blockchain and to lay a good foundation
for the growth of NFT art in China.
However, the way in which the gallery operates, from the uploading of NFT artworks to the trading and auctioning process, and then to the exhibitions, is not essentially different from traditional art galleries. It could be argued that despite the same context
of NFT art, Chinese NFT art is distinctly the opposite of its international counterparts. The creation, validation, valuation, circulation, and protection process of NFT art are all being completely redefined by its cryptocurrency nature. Yet in fact, in China,
these NFT art players are managing to avoid cryptocurrency. Chinese Big Tech such as Alibaba and Tencent, for example, these giants have inevitably chosen to abandon Ethereum and instead pursue their own “alliance chains”, which runs counter to the
decentralized nature of the blockchain, and by the way, lose the transparency of the NFT. While there are small companies like NFTCN that are trying to be technically risk-averse and still insist on using the Ethereum sidechain as their infrastructure,
cryptocurrency remains invisible in China market, and the players of NFT Art are completely separated from cryptocurrency by switching to the legal currency instead. These are largely due to the fact that Chinese officialdom has long taken a cautious
attitude towards crypto activities and have imposed restrictions on cryptocurrency. In September 2017, seven departments in China, including the People’s Bank of China and the Central Internet Information Office, released a joint announcement to the
public, which not only isolated cryptocurrency from China’s financial system but also further banned and purged the exchange of legal tender for tokens completely, while also forbidding trading platforms from providing information intermediary services. It
can be said that under such a severe ban, NFT has lost the ground for survival in mainland China.
In this context, Chinese NFT players are more likely to explore non-currency NFT art from the perspective of digital art creation and copyright protection. Chinese NFT art is also only allowed to be collected and displayed to a limited extent, but not traded in
the secondary market as a commodity or cryptocurrency.
From the end of 2020, at a time when NFT art is creating quite a buzz in the Chinese cultural sector, we can see several big names in traditional Chinese art collaborating with NFT art platforms. For example, Xiangjun Cheng, a famous Chinese landscape
painter, has partnered and contracted with the aforementioned NFTCN, offering NFT artworks for sale along with physical works to this retail brand. The response from the market suggests that consumers have been very enthusiastic about digital art as a
novelty. However, it is clear from the above image that some of Chinese NFT artworks themselves are in the form of traditional artworks, where NFTs are only used as a setting in the trading market and proof of ownership,
In general, NFT art in China is rather vague, due to regulatory bans. Whether it is the NFT business attempts of the big giants or the extension of the traditional art field, there is a big gap between real NFT art – or the NFT art made by their Western peers. Yet
whether in China or in the global market, NFT art has only been developing for the last decade or two, and there are still many possibilities for the combination of blockchain and art.
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