Day: March 22, 2024

Democracy summit may signal South Korea’s shift to harder stance on China

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Diplomatic observers said that while Seoul will still be cautious regarding Taiwan because of its close economic ties with mainland China, the hosting of the summit and close alignment with the US in other areas could drive it further away from Beijing. Kang Jun-young, a professor of Chinese studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, said: “Basically, South Korea is pursuing value-based diplomacy. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol addresses the democracy summit his country hosted. Photo: Kyodo “The reason is that now that the Biden administration is…

New Hong Kong Security Law Comes Into Force Amid Fears for Freedoms

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hong kong —  A new national security law came into force in Hong Kong on Saturday despite growing international criticism that it could erode freedoms in the city, which is ruled by China but has some autonomy stemming from its history as a British colony. The law took effect at midnight, when it was published on a government website, days after Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing lawmakers passed it unanimously, fast-tracking legislation to plug what authorities called national security loopholes. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee signed the new national security law…

Taiwan Faces Sovereignty Dilemma in South China Sea Amid Chinese Pressure  

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taipei, taiwan —  Taiwan has been grappling with debates over the last week about a potential visit to an island in the disputed South China Sea by its outgoing president. Some lawmakers from the main opposition party Kuomintang, which advocates friendlier ties with China, have urged Tsai Ing-wen, who will leave office in May, to visit Itu Aba, in the contested Spratly Islands, and assert Taiwan’s sovereignty over the island. Taiwan took control of the 46-hectare islet, which Taiwan and China call Taiping Island, in 1956. China, Vietnam and the…

Wong Chuk Hang is Hong Kong’s hot new art quarter

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hong Kong has always attracted entrepreneurs, but its hyper-expensive property market has rarely been hospitable to those running scrappy young galleries. Since the 2019 street protests, and with the pandemic and heavy-handed government restrictions weighing on its economy, Hong Kong’s commercial real estate market has fallen and a crop of young Chinese curators and dealers have been taking advantage. Many have gravitated to Wong Chuk Hang, which was the industrial…

South-east Asian collectors look beyond Hong Kong’s market

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. In January, walking around Singaporean fairs Art SG and SEA Focus, the attentive visitor could distinctly detect that special inflection of Cantonese typical to Hong Kong collectors. It is a sound that has become more common at art fairs in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia in the past few years as enticing alternatives to Hong Kong have emerged. South-east Asian artists and galleries have historically looked at Hong Kong as the…

Art Basel Hong Kong offers encounters with tapestries, tombstones and rabbits

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. “I am a part of all that I have met”: this year’s Encounters, the show of large-scale work at Art Basel Hong Kong, draws its theme from Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”. In this heartfelt dramatic monologue, Homer’s returning hero emerges as a man filled with dread by the prospect of the quiet life. Experience is all — so he decides to hand over to his son and embark on one more…

Filmmaker Yang Fudong likes to paint with his camera

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. When he entered his sixth decade, Yang Fudong wanted to make a work of art about time and the arc of human life. He initially thought the title should relate to a saying in Chinese, about how you only know your fate when you turn 50, but it was too simple and “not beautiful enough”. So instead he settled on a Chinese character he came across on the first page…

Collector Uli Sigg: ‘I gave myself the task of showing the storyline of Chinese contemporary art’

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“It was the blood and flesh of contemporary art that really got my interest,” says Uli Sigg, Swiss businessman, former ambassador to China and North Korea, and reputed to be the largest private collector of contemporary Chinese art in the world. In 2012 he gave 1,463 works from that collection to Hong Kong’s M+ museum, valued at $163mn, and sold them another 47 for $23mm. He owns another 900 works of art and is still acquiring. He is talking to me from his 17th-century Mauensee castle, which sits on a…

Hong Kong curator Pi Li: ‘We are not afraid of controversy’

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. When Pi Li left Hong Kong’s M+ contemporary art museum last year, it came as something of a surprise. Over a decade as senior curator and head of curator affairs, he had helped to acquire more than 1,500 works from Uli Sigg’s collection of contemporary Chinese art and felt like a fixture there. But before that he had been a versatile stalwart of the mainland Chinese art world as a…

Rebooted Art Basel Hong Kong back to full strength

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Art Basel Hong Kong opens with as much good news as bad. Last year’s release from all Covid restrictions has given the event a reboot and resulted in 242 exhibitors, 93 more than in 2023. Of these, 23 are new to the fair while 69 return after what for some was a four-year break, signalling renewed faith in Hong Kong’s position as Asia’s art-market centre. On the other hand, China’s economy is facing a protracted slowdown, as its property sector, hit by developers’ defaults, continues to suffer. The systemic risk…