Photography by Aliki Christoforou. Courtesy of Art Basel

It has not been easy for the art market in Asia, which has suffered from the wider, global economic and geopolitical uncertainty as well as its own specific national challenges. After a spike in totals in 2023, auction sales in Mainland China and Hong Kong fell 38% last year, according to the latest Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2025, experiencing a decline in highly priced lots coming to market in the same way as the international auction houses around the world.

There were yet some high points.

There has been a bit of an economic reset, but China is still in a good spot, with younger and more female collectors on the art scene
says Adrian Zuercher, Co-Head Global Asset Allocation, Co-Head Global Investment Management APAC, UBS Global Wealth Management CIO.

Last year, the region maintained its highest share of the middle market at auction (art priced between $50,000 and $1mn) plus, the report notes, Hangzhou’s Xiling Yinshe Auction posted sales up 30% annually for its 2024 major spring and autumn sales. In the postwar and contemporary art sector, the highest priced work to sell last year was for the Japanese painter Yoshitomo Nara, whose I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (2017), sold for the equivalent of $12.3m at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, the only work worldwide to sell above $10m in this segment, the report notes. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong auction rooms are responsible for the highest selling work across all categories in 2025 so far: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1984 Sabado por la Noche (Saturday Night), which sold to an Asian buyer for the equivalent of $14.5mn at Christie’s on 28 March.

There are other signs that the tide is turning, thanks in part to a new wave of collectors, not only in China, but also throughout Asia Pacific, including Japan, India and many Southeast Asian countries. At Christie’s, which opened swanky new premises in Hong Kong last year, 44% of buyers or bidders in Asia were millennials or younger, finds The Art Market Report 2025.

Their presence was felt through this year’s ‘Mad March’ season in Hong Kong, when the Art Basel Hong Kong art fair, the biggest such event on the continent, attracts a constellation of other commercial activity including high-end auctions, new gallery shows and alternative art fairs, which now time their activities to catch the coattails of the fair’s local and international attention.

This season’s buoyant mood was not a given. “There were nerves going in, between tariffs [between the US and China] and a softer Mainland market, expectations were muted,” says the Hong Kong and Shanghai-based gallerist Pearl Lam, one of Art Basel’s main fair exhibitors. But in the event, she found, “what emerged was a fair that felt re-energised, with new regional depth and a noticeable shift in who’s buying and how.”

The latest buyers on the scene fall broadly into two camps—including those with family money from China’s previous wave of wealth that began to make itself felt on the art market (and elsewhere) from the late 1990s. Part of the Great Wealth Transfer, for which UBS estimates $84tn to change hands over the next two decades,

the dominant first generation of patriarchs are passing on wealth to their female spouses and the second and third generation in China
Zuercher says.

Others now on the art scene are among Asia’s rising entrepreneurs, many of whom have made money from the technology industry, including cryptocurrency investors. Certain countries specialise in industries that have boomed recently—in Taiwan, for example, global demand for semi-conductors has seen the stock market more than double in value since 2020, notes Magnus Renfrew, global director of The Art Assembly, which runs fairs in Asia including Taipei Dangdai, and Art SG in Singapore. Elsewhere, there are signs that individual governments are getting behind the cultural scene. “In Japan, they are doing everything they can to promote their market, which is working,” says Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics and the author of the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2025. In this, she notes, Japan bucked the wider international market to grow in 2024, with dealers reporting sales up 7% in the year.

Many of the next generation of Asia’s buyers are based outside the continent or have spent a lot of time away from home, while some are even “nomadic” says Jeffrey Ziyu Liu, the co-founder of a next-generation global art community, called Stilllife and co-chair of the Young Patron Council at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum. Speaking on a panel during Art Basel Hong Kong, Ziyu described a friend who “only knows where she will be for the next two weeks”.

Also at play is the influence of other creative industries—Ziyu describes his journey into art as through the music of the introspective New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde. Another young collector, the Shanghai-based entrepreneur Cherry Xu, describes herself as passionate about fashion as she is art, and is launching a non-profit space, Cheruby, to support emerging artists who straddle both worlds.

This type of support is also something that characterises the latest collectors.

They recognise that collecting is also about custodianship and contributing through patronage
Jeffrey Ziyu Liu said.

It’s a marked change from the previous norm of “building all these museums that were shells with no content,” said René Meile, partner at the Beijing and Lucerne Galerie Urs Meile, who was also on the panel.

In terms of how the next wave is buying, a few shifts became apparent on the ground in Hong Kong. Firstly, the pace is slower, as frenzied sales have become a thing of the past. This is not just an Asia phenomenon—the wider geopolitical backdrop has understandably contributed to a general uncertainty that forces a pause. Gallerists identify a definite silver lining to the gentler pace (beyond making art fairs more manageable and enjoyable experiences). The backdrop is “prompting [collectors] to focus on acquiring artworks perceived as long-term investments rather than making impulsive purchases,” says Wendy Xu, managing director of Asia for White Cube gallery. Lam says too that “buyers were more deliberate and measured in their purchases, likely influenced by the current political and economic climate.” As a result, she says, when collectors did buy works, “it carried a deeper significance. a genuine willingness to connect with the art itself, regardless of market trends or political uncertainties.” Their sales at the fair included a Georg Baselitz canvas, Hannoversche Treue (2010) for €1.75m and a Damien Hirst butterfly painting, Inpertubatus (2023), for $850,000. Meanwhile, art priced at lower levels is bringing in new buyers, who are comfortable making online purchases. In 2024, online-only transactions in the art market were estimated at $10.5bn, down on the previous year alongside the wider art market but up nearly 76% since the pre-pandemic year of 2019, finds the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2025. The majority of these sales (62% by value) were made below $50,000, contributing to a global trend of higher volumes at lower price levels, something that appeals to younger entrants.

It might be a new wave but, reminds Eric Landolt, Global Head USG Family Advisory, Art and Collecting at UBS, building collections is not new in Asia. “It’s been happening for thousands of years, it’s in their DNA he says. The latest activity points however to a different mindset. “It’s not just buy, buy, buy,” says Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong, there are different ways of collecting nowadays, relationships are more collaborative. What this less transaction-based market means for the business of art fairs, galleries and auction houses around the world remains to be seen, but most are rising to the challenge with positivity. Siyang-Le describes the dynamics emanating from Asia’s next generation as “healthy shifts in a warmer world.”