An artist works on a painting in an alley in Dafen

In a village in southern China, Wu Ruiqiu is worried about the effect of an economic slump on the art market. He should be. Wu represents artists that make 60 percent of the world's oil paintings.

Wu is chairman of Dafen's art association, which groups 8,000 artists in a suburb of Shenzhen, China's biggest manufacturing hub. While employees in the city make cheap DVD players, computers and T-shirts, workers here produce Rembrandts, Monets and Warhols -- by the millions.

``This isn't the best of times,'' said Wu, 37, straining the Iron Buddha tea leaves from his porcelain cup. ``Dafen has to change to become more than a base for low-end fakes.'' Exports have fallen by a third this year, he said, the worst decline since the SARS epidemic in 2003 curtailed movement of people and goods in southern China. The drop in sales, 85 percent of which are exports, has forced the smaller of Dafen's 800 galleries to close. Others have slashed prices to compete.

If you want a real Van Gogh ``Sunflowers,'' expect to pay about $40 million, the auction record for one of the artist's signature works. In Dafen, you can get a fake for 250 yuan ($37).

Or how about Da Vinci's ``The Last Supper,'' or Yue Minjun's grinning men, or Zhang Xiaogang's gray, pursed-lipped families? Pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in an area the size of Beijing's Tiananmen Square are shops displaying reproductions of every style, subject and era.

A sculpture of a hand holding a paintbrush stands at the entrace to Dafen

Millions of Knockoffs

Of the nearly 5 million paintings produced at Dafen each year, almost 75 percent are knockoffs (the locals prefer the term replicas). The rest are original artworks, said Fan Yuxin, vice director of the government's Dafen Village management office.

Lan Xin, who runs a 100-square-foot gallery with Yue copies propped against the walls and hung on pillars, accepts custom orders. He clicked on an icon on his computer screen that expanded to show miniature images of paintings such as Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portraits. Lan said he commissions freelance artists to paint pictures customers order.

``We don't charge customers very much so we can't pay our artists very much,'' said Lan, with a shrug. Some artists earn as little as 200 yuan per painting and galleries typically have a 30 percent profit margin.

Dafen has humble roots. It was a sleepy village of 300 people, mostly farmers growing spinach and cabbages, when China- born, Hong Kong businessman Huang Jiang arrived with 26 artists in 1989, seeking a cheap base from which to complete orders placed by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kmart for more than 10,000 oil paintings.

Venus de Milo

Today, Dafen's once-dusty roads are paved, its sidewalks cemented. Western-style coffee houses and local eateries dot the streets. The area is hedged from the grimier parts of the city with manicured bushes, a story-tall stone canvas with Dafen's name in Chinese and English, and a replica of Michelangelo's Venus De Milo. A guard, wearing shades and pressed blue uniform, scrutinizes traffic and people entering and leaving the village.

``No one, not even me, thought Dafen would be this famous,'' said Huang, who still commissions paintings from the village to meet overseas orders. ``It was so simple and rural back then.''

In 1989, it cost about 800 yuan to hire an artist in Dafen, compared with more than 1,000 yuan in Hong Kong, said Huang, 63. The local Communist Party cadres helped with logistics, drawing in more businessmen and painters.

Last year, Dafen sold 430 million yuan of art, nearly double 2005 levels, according to the village management office.

``The paintings here are cheap, they are good, what's there not to like?'' said Houston, Texas-based Judy Berckman, browsing the stalls of galleries for ``abstract art.''

Las Vegas Art

Foreign companies think the same. The village's products line the walls of casinos in Las Vegas and Macau, such as the Venetian Macao, said Dafen art association's Wu. Buddy Lam, Venetian Macao's spokesman, said he ``wouldn't know if that's true.''

Still, not all fakes are equal. Collectors looking for museum-quality reproductions head to galleries like Shenzhen Sunrise Oil Paintings Co., where husband-and-wife team Chen Qiuzhi and Zhu Hong charge 10 times more for works than rivals.

``The paint on our pictures is layered and textured because they have been worked many, many times over,'' said Zhu. ``We make no apologies for charging what we do. You get what you pay for.''

Velvet Curtains

Sunrise's 3,000-square-foot warehouse is in a building with rusting window frames and peeling paint a 10-minute drive from Dafen village. Chen parted ceiling-to-floor velvet curtains to show gilt-framed pictures of French aristocrats in ballooning gowns.

A replica of 19th-century French Impressionist Jean Beraud's ``Boulevard des Capucines'' is offered for ``a few thousand'' yuan, said Chen. Depending on size, a replica at Sunrise could fetch ``tens of thousands of yuan,'' he said.

Chen, who paints original pictures, said he doesn't feel guilty copying other artists' works.

``It's a way of helping collectors who love but don't own the original to get an acceptable substitute,'' he said.

Dafen's prolific fakery roused complaints from original artists and their estates, prompting the government to introduce intellectual property rules that bar galleries from selling copies of works by living artists and those dead for less than 50 years.

Piracy Squad

Fan said an anti-piracy squad inspects galleries ``once a month or once a week'' and confiscates works that violate the rules. Still, he said the onus is on buyers and people who commission paintings to clear copyright issues.

``Painters just do as they are told,'' Fan said. ``Their obligation stops when they deliver the goods to customer satisfaction.''

A walk around Dafen's galleries, full of copies of works by China's bestselling contemporary artists, shows that the rules aren't strictly enforced.

Dafen has the backing of the Chinese government. In 2004, China's Ministry of Culture named Dafen a model for the nation's cultural enterprises. On December 2005, the head of China's rubberstamp parliament Wu Bangguo visited Dafen and lauded its development. In May 2007, the government spent 100 million yuan to build a museum in the village.

Mona Lisa

``We don't exhibit fakes in the museum, only original works,'' said Fan, 35. Near the museum's entrance is a stone mural, almost 10 meters tall, etched with the images of works like the ``Mona Lisa'' and Michelangelo's ``The Creation of Adam.''

Inside, the museum hall is empty except for a dozen oil paintings chronicling the evolution of Shenzhen's development as a Special Economic Zone from 1979 -- including ribbon-cutting and ground-breaking ceremonies.

To encourage more original works, Fan said the government has introduced incentives like subsidized housing and residency rights in Dafen for artists who meet government criteria.

``These measures are good, but original works don't sell well,'' said Jack Hoo, who runs Embody Scene & Art Gallery, which displays replicas of works by Chinese contemporary artists like Yue, Zhang Linhai and Wang Guangyi, starting at 200 yuan. ``Replicas are what people buy. That's the reality.''

Dafen's success with fakes is built on people like Qiu Zhiyong. A self-trained painter who came from a rural part of China's Hunan province, Qiu came to Dafen last July seeking better prospects.

Curled Tubes

His home is a rented fifth-floor apartment strewn with easels, curled tubes of paint, folded chairs and a dining table aswarm with art catalogs and periodicals, references for Qiu's painting. Against the living-room wall are two identical 16 inch-square pictures of a man with the outsized grin -- unmistakably a Yue Minjun image.

Qiu, 35, said he paints about 20 pictures a month and earns between 2,000 yuan and 3,000 yuan. He tried his hand at painting originals, including one on Santa Claus, and gave up after they failed to sell. Orders for his works have slowed about a third this year, Qiu said. If things don't improve in the next few months, he would consider painting fewer, more detailed knockoffs for a higher price.

``The market dictates what I paint,'' said Qiu. ``I will overcome any obstacle to make it in Dafen.''