By Régine Debatty

Back in June, a visit to Beijing might have induced you to believe that this is one hot city for media art. The Summer Digital Entertainment Jam, at various venues across the city, was showcasing the best in interactive art and design from schools in China and other Asian countries; a spectacular greenPIX 'zero energy' LED facade adorning the wall of the Xicui entertainment complex had been sexed up with videos by media artists; and Synthetic Times - Media Art China 2008 had just opened. The show – which had been clumsily dubbed by its organizers 'the biggest exhibition of new media art in the world' – turned out to be an extremely well curated panorama of contemporary media art practices, with, of course, the exception of anything that could be clearly identified with political activism. With Synthetic Times, however, Beijing managed to do what some previous Olympic cities have failed to do (I'm looking your way, Turin): using the Olympics as an opportunity to propose a meaningful, cutting-edge and inspiring art event.

As I was walking through Beijing's Dashanzi 798 art district recently and complaining that the area is taking a sharp turn towards disneylandization (is it me or is a chichi Nike Museum at odds with what is advertised as an 'alternative' art district?), my steps fortuitously led me to the Yuanfen New Media Art Space, a brand new gallery that dedicates its walls (and swimming pool) exclusively to media art, both Chinese and international. It’s the kind of gallery many major European and U.S. cities are still toying with the idea of opening one day.

Does that mean that Beijing, or any other Chinese city for that matter, has what it takes to become a hub for the media art scene? Is the media art culture there as vibrant as that of, say, Barcelona or New York? In fact, the country has latterly been warming up to the discipline. While on a national level, there are only a few digital art and design programs in art academy and universities, there are nevertheless grassroots workshops in the main cities and a few related publications that could in future amount to a real and vital scene.

'At this point, there are more artists working in new media utilizing various – though still quite limited – available technologies. More and more people are beginning to get their hands dirty messing around and experimenting, explains Zhang Ga, the artistic director and curator of Synthetic Times. 'But in terms of a contribution to the discipline, I am afraid that it is very much like the rest of Chinese art, which has not quite developed a formal language of its own, apart from adapting existing techniques and formal styles with Chinese content.'

Expectations are high among Western observers. I cant recount how many times I have received an email from a curator or festival organizer asking me to recommend a 'hot' or 'emerging' Chinese media artist for their exhibition. Give them a few more years and they'll be playing a more active and hopefully provocative role in the media art community. For the time being, however, I doubt that Chinese media art is ready to generate a Sino-craze as unhealthy as that currently experienced by the rest of the artworld.

Régine Debatty blogs at We Make Money Not Art. Also, check out the most widely-read Chinese website about media art: We Need Money Not Art