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Gaudy Chinese billionaire on buying binge unfazed by austerity drive

BEIJING — President Xi Jinping’s austerity drive has sent China’s high rollers running for cover, emptying casinos and golf courses as vin ordinaire becomes the new Chateau Lafite. Billionaire art collector Liu Yiqian does not seem to have gotten the memo.

Mr Liu Yiqian shows the porcelain Ming Dynasty ‘Chicken Cup’, which the billionaire drank tea from after buying it for US$36 million. His treatment of the historical artefact drew outrage from Chinese netizens. Photo: AP

Mr Liu Yiqian shows the porcelain Ming Dynasty ‘Chicken Cup’, which the billionaire drank tea from after buying it for US$36 million. His treatment of the historical artefact drew outrage from Chinese netizens. Photo: AP

BEIJING — President Xi Jinping’s austerity drive has sent China’s high rollers running for cover, emptying casinos and golf courses as vin ordinaire becomes the new Chateau Lafite. Billionaire art collector Liu Yiqian does not seem to have gotten the memo.

The Shanghai-based former taxi driver is on a buying binge that has left rivals gasping at auctions as he outbids all comers for ancient scrolls, Tibetan silk embroideries and imperial porcelain.

He has built and filled two museums with more than 2,300 works, including contemporary pieces by artists Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama. In the past year he has spent more than US$115 million (S$154.4 million) picking up such treasures.

Mr Liu, 52, is a classic rags-to-riches story of new China, a high-school dropout who made his fortune in the country’s nascent stock trading of the 1980s and ’90s. What sets him apart is the delight he takes in behaving like a Chinese Beverly Hillbilly who has no idea about designer labels (his wife buys his clothes) and still does the grocery shopping when she’s too busy.

In July, he caused an online furore in China for drinking tea from a 500-year-old ceramic bowl that once belonged to revered Emperor Qianlong. A photo went viral showing him dressed in a short-sleeved, plaid shirt, with an incipient smirk as he raised the precious, palm-size “Chicken Cup” to his lips.

China’s netizens could not decide which was more outrageous: His treatment of the historical artefact or the record US$36 million he paid for it at a Sotheby’s sale in Hong Kong. Even his settlement for the bowl was theatrical: 24 separate swipes of his American Express Centurion card.

Conspicuous consumption is not new among the billionaires minted during China’s economic boom. But shows of wealth are considerably rarer since Mr Xi came to power in 2012 and began a corruption crackdown that has netted thousands of officials, some from the top echelons of power. Ten days after Mr Liu’s tea-drinking stunt, the Communist Party said it was investigating former internal security chief Zhou Yongkang.

“I’m not nervous at all, because all my wealth is out in the open and there is nothing to worry about,” Mr Liu said in an interview. “Every country has experienced an anti-corruption campaign at some time.”

As if to prove the point, the AmEx card was out again last month for a Tibetan embroidered silk thangka he had won for US$45 million at an auction in November.

“In the last year and a half he has asserted himself as the greatest force in the Chinese market,” says Mr Nicolas Chow, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Asia. “He also has a knack for self-promotion and wild publicity stunts.”

A few days after paying for his thangka, Mr Liu was up to his old antics, stripping down to his underwear one night in his room and mimicking the lotus position of an antique Tibetan bronze yogi he was in town to bid for, while his daughter Betty captured the moment on her mobile phone.

“After Betty took that photo, I thought it was fun and decided to share it,” says Mr Liu, who juxtaposed the image with a photo of the yogi and sent it to friends on Chinese social media service WeChat.

“Most other collectors are quite dull. He’s a cheeky chappy, it’s refreshing,” says London-based art dealer William Qian.

“When he’s bidding, if he wants it, he gets it,” says Mr James Hennessy, a Hong Kong-based dealer. “That becomes his quest.”

It’s a quest that started 36 years ago, when he dropped out of school at 16 to make leather bags, around the time that Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was opening the country up and extolling the virtues of being rich.

“Learning at school was useless to me,” says Mr Liu, pointing out how years of wielding shears left his right thumb permanently larger than his left. Within six years he had saved enough money to buy a taxi, becoming one of the early owner-operators in Shanghai after the state monopoly was dismantled.

His big break came in the late 1980s, when China’s state-owned companies began issuing shares that were often privately traded. Mr Liu says he hit pay dirt in his first trade, buying about 60,000 yuan of stock at 200 yuan a share in retailer Cheng Huang Miao, now listed on the Shanghai exchange as Shanghai Yuyuan Tourist Mart Co.

Mr Liu sold his holding when the price soared to 10,000 yuan. “I think I have an exceptional nose for the market,” he says.

As his trading profits grew, Mr Liu started buying art, making up for what he lacked in knowledge by watching other collectors. “Whenever I saw others bidding, I just competed, and after I made the buy I would ask them, ‘Why is this piece good?’”

Today his holding company Sunline Group has a finance unit, a commercial and residential property developer and an insurance arm that has a joint venture with Paris-based AXA. Those assets make Mr Liu worth at least US$1.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

And that does not include his art stash, and Mr Liu says he has no idea how much it is worth.

“It must be a very, very huge figure, but I don’t give it much thought, because I won’t be selling the collection,” says Mr Liu, who dreams of creating a Chinese equivalent of the Guggenheim or the Museum of Modern Art. “I don’t care about the value, nor do I care about the money I spent buying it in the first place.” BLOOMBERG

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