CHINESE ART TRAFFIC | M6 | Enquête Exclusive

In France, Chinese decorative arts are all the fashion. Weary of standard furniture, the French are going wild over the originality of Asian furniture. Made from old wood, gilded with shimmering colors, they are the star items in contemporary style. Behind the discrete exterior of the Chinese art market, we discovered a number of frauds and counterfeit operations. Fake Chinese art affects everyone. The novice and the collector are both victims of the swindles. Dealers, auctioneers and experts work hand in hand to fleece the often naïve customer. Some of them have no scruples in selling artificially aged china ware, brand new furniture sold as 19th century articles, not to mention statuettes said to be from imperial tombs! We followed the chain from France back to China, from Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of China, to Ningbo, the center for fake antique furniture, by way of Canton, the supermarket for counterfeit items destined for antique dealers the world over. Ill-intentioned dealers buy very well made imitations of antique objects and sell them as the genuine item. Chinese craftsmen agreed to show us ancestral techniques for disguising new art objects to give them the patina of antiquity. It’s a lucrative trade for art professionals and for counterfeits who are now able to fool the most exacting scientific tests.