Tinari, whose UCCA center has grown to about 140 staff members since its founding in 2007, said the zone plays a key role in the global impact of Chinese contemporary art.

At the annual Art Basel Hong Kong international art fair, for example, more than 60 percent of Chinese galleries that present are from the zone, he said.

"If you look at the global art market, China actually has a very huge piece of the pie, right there with some of the major international centers," Tinari said. "What's interesting about Chinese contemporary art is that it's not the flavor of the month anymore. It definitely went through that period, in the late 1990s and early 2000s (but) that's not where we are anymore."

Gladston, the professor of contemporary art, has written extensively on the subject. "Two of the biggest changes in China's contemporary art scene in recent decades are, on the one hand, the establishment of contemporary Chinese art as a globally significant phenomenon, culturally, socially and politically, and, on the other, an increasing confidence among Chinese artists in asserting specifically Chinese cultural identities," he said.

One of that phenomenon's key issues, he added, is "the associated shift of cultural, economic and political power from the North and West to the East and South as part of globalization".

The role of Chinese art in expanding the country's influence has also "certainly helped to reinforce the standing of Chinese culture on the world stage and the perception that Western cultural power is in some sense waning", he said.

Qiu Zhijie, dean of the School of Experimental Art at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and professor at the School of Intermedia Art at the China Academy of Art, said Chinese contemporary artists who have had a major impact via international art events－such as Cai Guoqiang, who won the 48th Venice Biennale International Golden Lion Prize－are still concentrated in a select group.

"Chinese contemporary art collectors, for example, need to look more at the younger, budding artists," Qiu said.

"Still, the 798 zone remains an integral stop for anyone who wants to understand Chinese contemporary art's place in the world," he said.

Zhang Mu, 36, from Sichuan province, has exhibited in various domestic venues but sees the 798 Art Zone as having the leading role in China's contribution to the global contemporary art scene.

"As an international art hub, there may be no better platform than 798," he said.