"Most paintings sold at auction fairs in Beijing are not real," said Han Meilin, a renowned artist in Beijing. In an effort to fight back against this illegal activity, Han and 37 famous artists gathered in the city last week and announced they'd present some of their original paintings for sale next week.

Days ago, Chinese monk artist Shi Guoliang, tried to stop an auction company from selling fake products claimed to be drawn by him. However, his demand was turned down. Recently, another artist, Wu Guanzhong, called for cancellation of an auction scheduled to be held on September 17. He said that none of the paintings for sale were authentic.

Beijing has over 200 auction companies and about 80-90% of their products are fake, said Chen Dazhang. He never attends any auctions. However, paintings claimed to be drawn by him show up in auction fairs from time to time. Even with the aid of high technology it's very difficult to tell what is fake and what is genuine. These sales were disrespectful of the hard work of the artists, Chen said. 

Seeing so many fakes appearing at auction renowned artist Liu Chunhua said that he abhorred the phenomenon. However, he could do nothing about it. Liu said that many of the forgeries were sold for several million yuan or even more. To him those producing the fake paintings were just like burglars or even worse.

Just as seriously some experts dealing with the identification work of authentic paintings served as accomplices to those producing the fakes indicating their work was genuine when they knew full well it was not. 

(Chinaview.cn September 13, 2006)'