Some thirty years have passed since the award-winning film “Style Wars” was released, bringing to the world’s attention the little-understood graffiti culture of 1980s New York. Now a new documentary hopes to shed light on the even lesser-known world of China’s graffiti artists. “Spray Paint Beijing”, which had its UK premier on March 28th, follows 16 "graffers" (as the artists are called) across the Chinese capital. With its abundance of concrete walls and construction sites, Beijing should be a tagger’s paradise. But the documentary’s director, Lance Crayon, estimates the community to number only in the dozens.

If the numbers are small, it is not due to government suppression. Notoriously censorious of other arts, Chinese officials have mostly turned a blind eye to graffiti. Contrary to his initial expectations, Crayon found artists working openly in daylight and attracting photo-snapping crowds as policemen passed by with indifference. While their counterparts in the West have only minutes to ply their craft, China’s graffers have the luxury of hours, even days, to perfect their designs without being stopped.

Convicted graffiti artists in America, England and Australia can face fines of thousands of pounds and jail time of up to several years. Getting caught with paint on your hands in Singapore could result in a caning. But in China, although graffiti is illegal, practitioners rarely face punishment. Those few who are apprehended seldom spend more than a night in custody or have to pay more than 500 yuan ($81) in fines.

At times the Chinese government has even taken to sponsoring graffiti. In the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games authorities let local artists loose on an officially sanctioned 300m-long graffiti wall—on the condition that they first submitted their designs for vetting. More recently a section of the Great Wall was declared an authorised graffiti zone.

China’s relative openness is perhaps explained by precedent. Modern Chinese graffiti is only a couple of decades old but writing on walls isn’t shocking in a country that has a long history of doing it.

Since the Han dynasty (206BC-220AD) scholars have carved words into rocks and trees; later they brushed verses onto the walls of monasteries and roadside inns. Successive dynasties, from the early emperors to today’s communist leaders, have carved their calligraphy into China’s scenic spots. The words chosen differ, and are penned with varying degrees of elegance, yet the underlying projection of power is the same.

Since the beginning outdoor inscriptions have been a locus for political struggle. The imperial court welcomed poets who would pen paeans to their governance, but would unleash their fury on those writing in dissent. Thousands were executed in retaliation, when, in a precursor to the second-century Yellow Turban Rebellion, rebels chalked on to government walls the subversive motto ‘甲子’(pronounced jia zi and, denoting the first year of the Chinese 60-year astrological cycle, implying the start of a new era).

Two millennia later, Mao plastered big red character slogans onto walls across China, while at the same time cracking down on anyone questioning his orthodoxy through hand-written posters. After Mao’s death, dissidents made their own mark with big-character posters at a spot in western Beijing that became famous as the Democracy Wall.

Today’s streetwise Chinese graffiti artists know to toe the line. Although some touch on sensitive issues such as inflation and pollution, they avoid direct censure of the government. They also understand that state-owned buildings are off-limits. They may be following in a long domestic tradition of wall writing, but most Chinese graffers draw their inspiration from American hip hop culture, preferring to tag their names in English.

ANDC, a 27-year-old, baseball-cap-wearing artist who features in “Spray Paint Beijing” saw graffiti for the first time in 2005 when he watched “Style Wars”. A couple of years later he co-founded ABS, now one of the Beijing’s most prolific graffiti crews. If American graffiti was born in the ghetto, Chinese graffers hail from the middle classes. As ANDC says, “In China, most people doing graffiti are art students, not gangsters. Most aren’t poor because [spray cans are] quite expensive.”

Rather than being subversive, graffiti can be profitable. Local artists have collaborated with commercial brands such as Red Bull, Adidas and Louis Vuitton. ANDC recently opened a store in Beijing’s trendy 798 art district selling spray paint and T-shirts with his designs.

China’s nascent graffiti culture budded alongside the rise of consumerism. The community is tiny for now, with perhaps no more than 200 artists across the country. But as more people can afford both spray cans and the leisure time to enjoy them, this culture will no doubt flower—as long as the government continues to let it.

(Picture credit: Spray Paint Beijing)