Beijing’s 798 District is a neighborhood of abandoned factories. The dusty brick buildings have the look of factories anywhere, tall structures with large windows, high ceilings and broad, open-plan floors. The sight is not uncommon in China, but what makes the 798 District different is that these factories have been re-colonized by an unlikely group: over the past decade, hundreds of art galleries and artists both international and local have made their homes and studios in the 798 District’s post-industrial landscape.

Walking around 798 quickly begins to feel like a strange dream. The streets are populated by distorted sculptures of human figures, enormous rusty Communist soldiers and headless bodies in military garb saluting blindly to the tourists wandering around them. The neighborhood is a surprise to many travelers to China; the established presence of avant-garde culture is antithetical to the government’s policies of censorship and intolerance of political criticism. The surprise only heightens when visitors discover that Beijing has not one, but four art gallery districts, and that China’s contemporary art scene, far from obscure, is enjoying fame on a greater scale than ever before.

Owing to a combination of influence from the international art world, media attention and a lifting of government restrictions on self-expression, Chinese artists have recently found themselves in the spotlight. The international market for Chinese contemporary art has also expanded rapidly in the last decade, making stars out of artists such as Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun and Fang Lijun, all of whom have sold works at recent Christie’s and Sotheby’s contemporary art auctions for over one million U.S. dollars.

The problem with citing statistics of Beijing’s growing gallery districts and over-publicized sales figures is that it masks the disparities and flaws behind this recent development. Spaces lay empty and unused in the 798 District, abandoned by their tenants to dust. Many feel that Chinese galleries emphasize only the kind of art that sells: easily digestible, superficially political work. Though the rapid growth in size and reputation of the Beijing art scene has afforded Chinese artists, galleries, writers and curators alike the ability to work on a larger scale, this newfound notoriety has also come with its own structural problems.

Though Beijing’s art districts are still works in progress, the difference between the developed density of these areas today and their small scale or non-existence only years ago is striking. Five years ago, the 798 District was a collection of only a few galleries and a handful of artists’ studios. Today, the neighborhood plays host to hundreds of art spaces, cafés, studios and museums and has become one of Beijing’s biggest tourist attractions. The 798 District has already begun to attract the attention of large international galleries interested in taking part in the city’s growing contemporary art scene. Most notably, prominent New York City gallery Pace opened a 22,000 square foot space in 2008. The presence of galleries like Pace, Faurschou from Denmark and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art founded by Belgians Guy and Miriam Ullens, are symbolic of growing international confidence in the staying power of Beijing’s contemporary art community.

Local, Chinese-founded art spaces and galleries have also felt the benefit of recent expansion. The Long March Space, a commercial art gallery, has been the focus of much international attention. The Long March Space originated from the Long March Project, a traveling art exhibition and long-term performance piece initiated by Chinese curator Lu Jie in 1999. The first effort of the Long March Project was ‘A Walking Visual Tour’, a series of twelve exhibitions at locations on the path of the original Long March undertaken by the Communist army. ‘A Walking Visual Display’ was an effort to examine China from both inside and outside, looking at China’s history from an international perspective and using art exhibitions as a way of questioning established beliefs about Chinese identity.

According to Zoe Butt, an Australian woman who has been the Director of International Programming for the Long March Space since June 2007, this aim “has definitely expanded” since the beginnings of ‘A Walking Visual Display’. “I think that the Long March Project since 2003 [when the Long March Space opened in 798] has been a journey very much wanting to argue what is China to the international, how do you bridge the gap between local and international.” In addition to its gallery exhibitions, the Long March Space has also become the headquarters of the Long March Project, developing and organizing projects abroad as well as in China.

The position of the Long March Project between local and international is a difficult point to resolve for the organization. Though the possibility clearly exists for Chinese-led art projects on an international scale, it is often difficult to persuade many Chinese artists to move out of a purely Chinese context or to work outside of the mainstream Western art world in cooperation with less well-known art communities. Butt continues, “There are of course many Chinese artists willing to more critically engage with an international platform, but it’s a slow process, and I think it’s very much about a cultural attitude… I must say that right now I am fairly frustrated.” Beijing’s contemporary art community is now at an uncertain point. The difficulties of moving from a national phenomenon to an integrated part of the greater international art world present clear challenges for Chinese artists as well as the ground troops of the art world, international curators and gallery directors.

Song Zhuang, a village two hours’ travel on subway and bus outside of Beijing city, has become an enclave for contemporary Chinese artists. The rambling collection of brick courtyard houses, blocks of studio compounds and larger galleries and residencies is both a home and a community for hundreds of artists. That Song Zhuang is off the beaten path from Beijing’s larger art gallery scene makes it a more isolated place where artists are free to work away from the influence of the commercial market. The village has gained a reputation for fostering artistic talent; some of China’s most famous artists still keep their studios there, including Fang Lijun and Yue Minjun.

It is clear from artist Lu Lin’s studio that he does well by his art. The warehouse-sized space provides ample room for the painter’s large canvases, abstract works that combine traditional Chinese painting formats with new media and modern techniques. Though the artist still sells his works, business has largely turned from commercial galleries to selling privately from his studio. “The 798 galleries won’t show my work,” he says, “They think it’s too conservative, not ‘contemporary’ enough. I don’t think my work is ‘contemporary’ at all.” Lu is frustrated that so many contemporary Chinese artists follow a set style commercial style, a movement often called ‘cynical realism’. Cynical realism incorporates realist imagery, often including Communist propaganda, symbols and figures from China’s recent past, but perverts it with strange distortions, off colors and abstract painting techniques.

“That kind of art,” Lu Lin continues, “doesn’t come from China’s history or culture. It just conforms to Western expectations of what Chinese contemporary art should be.” The drive towards commercial development and the lure of commercial success, according to Lu, has pushed Chinese artists to follow only what sells and not to develop independently. Fellow painter and Song Zhuang resident Gao Yang agrees. He feels that too many young Chinese artists are willing to copy already popular motifs in order to gain money or fame. “They all paint the same things,” the artist says in exasperation, “Tiananmen Square, Chairman Mao, the Cultural Revolution… there is no development, no independent thinking.”

Many feel the immense popularity of contemporary Chinese art in the cynical realist style has overshadowed more worthwhile art. Zhao Yi, a mixed media artist who creates boxes filled with sculpted and painted fiber, feels slighted by the excessive attention paid to cynical realist painters and the lack of galleries focused on mid-career artists. “There is no support system for artists,” she says, sitting at the table of her Song Zhuang studio, “The galleries only want to show artists whose work will sell immediately… They judge art by how much money it will make, not by how good it is.” Though there is international interest in Chinese contemporary art, only the artists who become famous truly get international exposure. “The Western galleries that come here are the same,” Zhao continues, “They just promote those Chinese artists who are already well known, whose work they can already sell.”

The international vogue for Chinese contemporary art has flooded Beijing’s art scene with money, notoriety and exposure. This growth has benefited all involved in the Chinese contemporary art community, but it is also clear that by highlighting a specific trend in Chinese art, the international art world has disenfranchised other aspects. The pressing problems of the Beijing contemporary art scene’s development, including gallery infrastructure and critical presence, have been ignored. These are problems that must be confronted in the pursuit of independence for Chinese contemporary art.