Artist Who Dares the Bourgeoisie

Ai Weiwei

On April 3 while on his way to Hong Kong Ai Weiwei was arrested by Chinese police at the Beijing airport. His arrest was acknowledged by the authorities three days later and it was reported in the Global Times, the Communist Party-run newspaper. It was stated that Ai was held for ‘economic crimes’ and the authorities were investigating into it. His studio was raided, his wife was questioned and many of his assistants were also detained.
This information in itself should not be alarming, unfortunately, as this has become routine in the People’s Republic of China where the Communist Party-government has been on a protest/dissent crackdown overdrive from December 19, 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze after police highhandedness in Tunisia and tension gripped the Middle East and North Africa.

The Muffled Voices
The list of people who have been detained, arrested or ‘missing’ is endless: Liu Zhenggang, a designer who suffered a cardiac arrest while in detention; Xu Zhiyong, a lawyer charged with tax evasion; Wu Liliong, an environmentalist who was exposing industrial pollution at Lake Tai in eastern China; Guo Feixiong, a legal rights activist; Liu Xianbin, for inciting subversion; Ran Yunfei, Chen Wei and Ding Mao, all three for inciting subversion; Yang Hengjun, a novelist; and many others like Jiang Tianyong, Li Tiantian, Liu Shihui, Tang Jingling, Tang Jitain, Teng Biao…Of course how can one forget Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Liu is a political prisoner who is serving an 11-year sentence for pro-democracy appeals, especially through his Charter 08. The list goes on… Some of these people have been released while some continue to be under detention.
The vagueness in the details regarding the arrests is partially also because of the secretive nature in which the police work. Also most of the people who are released are warned not to go public about the time they spent under arrest. All this should not be surprising for a country that is run by a government that deems it fit to lock up its only Nobel Laureate.
If one were to profile all the people who are arrested or just ‘disappear’ there are a few common traits — they are either artists, or social activists or human right lawyers; all of them are either vocal about the injustices prevalent within the system or are seen as a threat by Beijing.

Protester Artist
Ai’s case is different mainly because of the political influence he has, or rather had at one point, and the international status he enjoys. Ai’s father Ai Qing was a revolutionary poet who was with Mao Zedong during the proclamation of the People’s Republic in 1949. But within a decade he was accused of advocating free-speech and revolution and was sentenced to 16 years community service. Ai Weiwei grew up seeing this dichotomy and in 1981 Ai Weiwei left for the US. As an artist Ai had a different approach and perspective to what many saw as everyday mundane things. In 1988 he got his first solo exhibition.
One of the architects of the famous Bird’s Nest (stadium) which was the cynosure of all eyes during the Beijing Olympics, Ai Weiwei has always been vocal of his discomfort the way the Communist Party was taking the Chinese people. Ai was rattled by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed around 80,000 and left close to 40 lakh homeless. More than 5,000 schoolchildren were buried alive as school buildings collapsed. Through his blogs he attacked the corrupt local administration that built the “tofu buildings”. He campaigned for the family of Chen Xiaofeng who was run over by the son of an influential official in Baoding. The campaign came to be as ‘My father is Li Gang’ — these were the words of the son as he drove away. Ai was also vocal in his support for Liu Xiaobo.

‘Fat Guy’ Difference
Ai Weiwei was released after 81 days on June 22 under the quobao houshen. The quobao houshen, which has been loosely but incorrectly compared to a bail, is an agreement in which the accused is released but investigations continue for up to a year. The accused will have the freedom to move within a restricted area (town, city) but access to the media is restricted. Ai, after lying low for a month or two, sprung back in August in a highly critical article of the government’s proposed law to detain a person for up to six months without informing the family. Later he was slapped with a $2 million fine for the tax evasion done by the company that promotes his art. Ai, known in twitter and sina weibo as Uncle Ai or ‘fat guy’, made an appeal to netizens who collected close to $1.3 mn (Ai said this was the ‘beginning of civil society in China’). The latest charge against Ai is that he is spreading pornography. Nude art is common among Chinese artists and with the emergence of a photograph titled ‘One Tiger and Eight Breasts’ the authorities are hounding Ai and the people behind the shoot. Expressing support to Ai, his fans are posting their nude pictures on the Internet.
The Chinese government arrested Ai for ‘economic crimes’ thereby making the issue an internal matter. This prevents any foreign country from interfering in their ‘internal affairs’. That this is a ‘Trojan’ used by Beijing is a well-known fact. However, his background, international support and pressure from the artistic community made it hard for the government to detain him further.
The predicament or opportunity Ai Weiwei is in — depending on which side you stand — has been very succinctly put by journalist Kelly Crow: “What happens when you become the modern-day, artistic equivalent of that young man who once stood before the tanks in Tiananmen Square?”

Ai Weiwei with his Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern, London

Heart-Patient Sprinter
Ai Weiwei in one of his blogs describes China has a sprinter with a heart condition. China is zooming ahead with a resurgent zeal of be ‘the’ world superpower. This is aided with its economy doing well and Beijing is expanding its defence forces and forging ties with countries around the world. However, while these positives are there, it is a nation that is crumbling from within. Corruption is increasing and inequality is widening. There are no forums to address ones grievances and the government, especially the provincial ones, do not entertain complains against corruption. Add to this the fact that freedom for a Chinese citizen is the ration what the state doles out.
The uprising in the Middle East and North Africa has got Beijing worked up. While initially the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt was censored, the authorities soon understood that it could not keep its people away from the Arab Spring that was spreading like wildfire. So it got cracking on the people who were voicing their dissent or people likely to gather support for the causes they were voicing.

Different Chinas
China has changed a lot from the ideals of what it claims to be ever since it started economic reforms in 1978. Though it claims to be a socialist in outlook, a socialistic approach is today more or less on paper. The way the government has gone about with its policies of development has resulted in disparities of two kinds — income and regional. China has some of the world’s most rich people and a large pool of poor people. In the cities migrant labourers, along with their families, form this pool and are treated as second-class citizens with almost no rights. Region-wise the development can be seen as a trickle-down model. While coastal areas and cities have got the lion’s share of development, central provinces come next and the western provinces and interior regions come the last, usually getting the leftovers from the central provinces. This has led to massive migration to cities in search of labour/food. Developmental migration, due to power projects or urbanisation, should also been seen as a reason for spurring poverty and inequality.
China, today, is one of the world’s most capitalistic country in which the Communist Party is the biggest bourgeoisie. And anyone who questions the ways of this bourgeoisie is silenced.
(This appeared in The New Indian Express on November 28)