Casting a Fresh Eye on China With Computer, Not Ink Brush By JANE PERLEZ, on the Chinese video artist Yang Fudong:

For all the attention that he and other young Chinese artists have received abroad, few of them any longer want to leave their homeland, Mr. Yang said.

"My friends and I don't have a strong desire to live abroad," Mr. Yang said as he served tea in the living room of his sixth floor walk-up that has so far survived this city's hyperactive bulldozers. "I'm not interested in politics. Our thinking is very simple: It's good to go abroad for several weeks for an exhibition, then after a while you have to come back. You get homesick."

"What's great is to make a movie with your friends, chat, eat Chinese food," he said. "It's a great life, and that's life now."

Unlike those who left in the 90's after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, current Chinese painters and installation and video artists said they could work pretty much unfettered. Certainly, direct hits at the political system are forbidden, and homosexuality as a subject is off-limits. But after officialdom allowed a sharp-edged show, designed to counter the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, to proceed unscathed, the closing of art shows has been virtually unheard of, they said.

Another inducement to stay is the availability of the latest computer and video equipment, especially in prestigious Chinese art schools. China's strength in commercial electronic technology is an important aspect of the art world here.

So things are looking up as far as personal freedom goes. I haven't seen the art, though.