Hong Kong – He first stunned the auction world by snapping up hugely expensive Chinese antiquities, but now taxi driver turned tycoon Liu Yiqian is targeting Western masterpieces, saying it is his “social responsibility” to show them to China’s younger generation.

Liu has become China’s highest profile art collector, hitting headlines with record-breaking buys and an irreverent approach.

His acquisitions have mainly been of Chinese heritage, most famously the tiny Ming Dynasty “Chicken Cup” for which he paid $36 million in 2014 at Sotheby’s before drinking tea from it, causing a social media meltdown.

But in a departure from his Chinese collecting spree, last year Liu splashed out on Modigliani’s “Nu Couche” or “Reclining Nude” for more than $170 million at Christie’s, the second highest price ever paid at auction for a work of art.

Liu says he hopes the museum he founded in Shanghai, the Long Museum, where much of his collection is on display across two branches, will increasingly become a showcase for Western art as well as Chinese classics.

The Modigliani is due to go on show at the museum next year.

“The world is globalised…our collection is mainly Chinese traditional works of art, (but) we are going to expand into Western and Asian works. I hope in my life time I can collect more from both China and the West,” he told AFP in an recent interview at Christie’s regional headquarters in Hong Kong.

Liu said he felt a “social responsibility” to enable Chinese youngsters to experience Western masters.

“Other than Chinese traditional and contemporary works of art, younger generations in China have developed deeper recognition of Western works,” he said, relaxing in an armchair and talking through a haze of cigarette smoke after cutting the ribbon on a preview ahead of Christie’s spring sales in May.

“I hope top Western works of art can be exhibited in Shanghai or in our country. I think it’s something someone has to do…it’s cultural exchange.” With a personal wealth of $1.38 billion according to Forbes magazine, Liu is among the ranks of the new Chinese super-rich.

Having made his fortune in real estate and finance in the 1990s, he now runs a huge conglomerate across several industries from chemicals to investments.

Liu’s auction buys have not been without controversy – his $8.2 million purchase of an “ancient” scroll of nine Chinese characters was derided as a fake by a group of respected Chinese experts but he brushed off the scepticism.

He also remains unapologetic over drinking from the valuable porcelain “Chicken Cup”, depicting a rooster and hen tending their chicks.

“I wasn’t showing off,” he told AFP, drinking this time from an ordinary tea cup.

“I was just being myself.” While he is eyeing Western works, Liu is also still snapping up Chinese pieces.

This month he bought a painting by Chinese master Zhang Daqian for $35.93 million at Sotheby’s – a new record for the artist at auction.

Liu has said before that his moves to buy up Chinese antiquities are part of a bid to bring heritage back to the mainland.

He paid a record $45 million in 2014 for a 15th-century Tibetan “thangka” tapestry at a Christie’s auction.

Beijing has ruled Tibet since 1951, a year after invading, and considers the Himalayan region an integral part of its territory. The Tibetan government in exile and some scholars dispute China’s historical claims.

“We should not be obsessed with how these things (Chinese antiquities) spread overseas,” Liu told AFP.

New Delhi – New Delhi on Friday imposed driving restrictions that will take around a million cars off its roads for the second time this year, seeking to improve air quality in the world’s most polluted capital.

The Delhi government first introduced the experiment for two weeks in January as dangerous levels of haze choked the city and authorities said they were bringing it back for another 15 days by popular demand.

“Odd-even is back because the people of Delhi wanted it,” the city’s transport minister Gopal Rai said Friday, referring to the scheme that restricts cars to alternate days according to whether they carry odd or even-numbered licence plates.

“We have full faith that Delhi’s people will follow this odd-even rule from today.” A 2014 World Health Organisation survey of more than 1,600 cities ranked Delhi as the most polluted, partly because of the nearly 10 million vehicles on its roads.

As the scheme got going early Friday, pollution reached a “very unhealthy” 191 on the US embassy’s air quality index, meaning people with heart or respiratory problems, children and the elderly should stay indoors.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvin Kejriwal has said pollution levels fell after restrictions were imposed in January, but many scientists say the scheme is not enough to tackle the problem.

“It is exactly like taking out 10 buckets of water from the ocean, the magnitude of the pollution problem is such,” said Gufran Beig, the chief scientist at India’s state-run System of Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research.

Delhi commuters have generally been positive about the trial but mostly because it frees up traffic on the city’s usually clogged roads.

Women travelling alone or with young children and politicians, judges and police are all exempt, as are men taking their children to school.

Scores of traffic police and volunteers took to the streets to enforce the scheme, wearing smog masks and holding banners urging drivers to comply.

Most drivers appeared to be sticking to the rules Friday and many took to cycling as an alternative, making Delhi’s usually-clogged roads flow relatively freely.

However, many offices and schools were shut Friday, a public holiday in India, and the true test of the scheme will be when they reopen on Monday.

TOKYO – Some of Japan’s biggest firms including Sony and Toyota shut down operations in southern Japan Friday after the region was struck by a deadly earthquake, fuelling worries about disruption to supply lines and possible effects on the wider economy.

At least nine people were killed in Thursday night’s 6.5-magnitude quake, which also toppled houses and buckled roads on the southwestern island of Kyushu.

With widespread damage to infrastructure, several companies – including in the steel, auto and technology sectors – said they had temporarily ceased production.

Exporter giants Toyota, Honda and Sony were carrying out safety checks assess possible damage to plants and those of suppliers.

Other firms shutting down included Mitsubishi Electric, Renesas and Fujifilm as well as tyre maker Bridgestone and beverage titan Suntory Holdings.

Sony shares were down around three per cent in the afternoon, Toyota lost 1.2 per cent and Honda was off 0.45 per cent while Bridgestone lost 0.70 per cent.

However, the broader Nikkei stock index was only slightly lower, with some of the losses also attributable to profit-taking after a strong rally this week.

Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Motoo Hayashi told reporters the there had not been the devastation that tore into northern Japan after the 2011 quake.

“There are some companies that have stopped operations, but so far I’ve received no reports of huge impact such we had” in the March, 2011 quake, he said, according to Jiji Press That quake unleashed a deadly tsunami that swallowed schools and entire neighbourhoods, killing more than 18,000 people and triggered reactor meltdowns that released radiation in the most dangerous nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

It also led to the closure for several months of dozens of factories, decimating the country’s production capacity and sending shockwaves through the already struggling economy.

Shattered supply chains and rolling power shortages forced companies such as Sony and Toyota to temporarily shut plants in the weeks after the disaster and Japan’s industrial output tumbled by its largest amount on record in the March.

Many component manufacturers were based in the worst-hit regions and the disaster led to a call for firms to spread their operations to avoid a repeat of the widespread shutdown that hammered economic growth.

The latest quake comes as the economy struggles to get on track, with the government’s growth drive stumbling and growth still tepid.

“Japan’s economy has weak growth momentum and remains in a fragile state with the absence of a powerful and sustained engine for growth,” Yasunari Ueno, chief market economist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo, told Bloomberg News.

“Any unexpected powerful shock could push the nation into a recessionary phase.”

Tokyo – A runaway chimpanzee in Japan was shot with a tranquiliser gun only to hang precariously from a power line before falling to the ground and surviving in a drama shown live on national television.

The chimp, 24-year-old Chacha, was more fortunate than a zebra which escaped from a Tokyo zoo last month, its bid for freedom ending in death when it collapsed in a water trap after also being shot with a tranquiliser.

The chimp escaped from Sendai Yagiyama Zoological Park with keepers in hot pursuit but climbed up an electricity pole.

Zoo officials shot the chimp with the tranquiliser which eventually kicked in and caused him to lose his footing, though he managed to grab hold of a power line with one hand.

Seconds later however Chacha lost his grip and fell, live footage on TBS showed.

Chacha bounced off a lower cable before plummeting headfirst towards the ground where waiting rescuers tried to break the fall with a plastic sheet.

He was then wrapped in a blanket before being placed into a zoo ambulance.

“Chacha is coming to from the tranquiliser,” Zoo staffer Toshikazu Abe told AFP.

“Despite the fall, he was unhurt and there is no threat to his life,” he added.

“We are investigating why he escaped.”

Every year a Tokyo zoo stages a drill where a keeper dresses as an animal and stages an escape, giving zoo workers the opportunity to hone their techniques.

Dramatic moments before runaway chimp falls from wires

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

YouTube screengrabs, Reuters