Georgina Adam mentions a new Chinese art fund in her weekly Financial Times column:

Beijing’s Minsheng Bank, the nation’s first privately owned bank, has just launched its “No 2 Product, Works of Art Investment Scheme”, which was fully subscribed in a week. The fund will purchase a wide range of art, from ancient to contemporary. The success of the No 2 fund is no doubt due to the performance of China’s first art fund, launched by Minsheng in 2007, and which, according to the bank, produced returns of up to 25 per cent.

Nevertheless, the art data site Artprice.com reports that prices for Chinese contemporary art have nosedived in the last year. Its index, starting from a base of 100 in 1998, hit its top on January 1 2008 at 347 but slid to 244 on January 1 2010. Also significant is the slip in the number of Chinese artists with the highest sales at auction. In 2007 nine Chinese artists figured among the top 15, with Zheng Xiaogang, painter of the repetitive “Bloodline” series, in the number three spot. Provisional figures for 2009 show only six Chinese in the top 15, with the late Chen Yifei at number five.

The Art Market (Financial Times)