For Economy

Country wide poverty

In context with the contemporary art in China, one of the biggest effect of the Cultural Revolution was the nation wide economic state.  Growing up, whenever I disliked what was on my plate, I would hear endless stories of the rationing my parents lived with when they where my age.  My grandparents would tell me of the day when the government decided to change the national currency and over night, the money they spend so long to earn is completely worthless.  The Cultural Revolution and the war left majority of China in poverty.

Temporal nature of currency

 In 1978 under Deng Xiaoping, the successor of Mao, the Open-Door policy is introduced with the aim to reform the country's economic system, that was left in shatters, through the acceptance of the globe and the capitalist system (Wang 6).  But throughout the 1980s, the State struggled to raise the economy while maintaining absolute control over the rise of art, cultural, and intellectual appetite resulting in the 1989 Tienanmen Square incident (8). 

1989 Tienanmen Square (with English)

Globalization of ideology plays an interesting role in China.  The Cultural Revolution was first sparked by foreigner's move away from the absolute monarchy (and introduction to Marxism) while the Chinese imperial system was still standing.  The open door policy to the economic model of the West introduced once again the idea of democracy within a near totalitarian (some argue Mao was pretty much an emperor) country. Though I would argue that these influences are that of ideals; the intake of a dream, utopia, of what the system can be and not seeing clearly all the hidden corners.  It bring into question, with the rising frequency of cultural contact within globalization, the fine line between cultural expression and cultural performance that Hans Belting mentions in "Contemporary Art as Global Art".  The difference and similarities between staging the best, the utopian facade, and sincerity of nation.

But by the 2000 when the Shanghai Biennale took place, the State's attitude towards the "social and [the] cultural [has] relax[ed] in eagerness for the rise of economy" (Wang 77).  Under Mao and the sociology of communism, the artist works for the people and collectors were not feasible.  Wang argues that with the rise of the arts comes the rise of the market, the two are tied.  Not only does "politics need the coat of culture to be made accessible and legible to the masses" (159) after the failure of the Cultural Revolution, but it needs culture to create an economic arena for China internationally as well.