“Chinese investors are beginning to collect contemporary Chinese art as they accumulate wealth. Oil paintings, statues and other works created by artists since the 1980s used to sell for no more than $1,000 a piece a decade ago. Today, they can go for $600,000 or more. Sales at the latest autumn and spring contemporary art auctions in Hong Kong more than doubled to HK$276 million ($35.5 million) from a year earlier.”