PLAYBOY:As China has opened to the West, what’s the impact of a nondemocratic system in which the Communist Party selects its leaders from within?

AI: The way to survive in this party is to hide yourself or to become a person who obeys orders from above. These are not people with new ideas who are bold. One generation chooses the next, and one is worse than the former. It’s like inbreeding. After so many generations, it becomes weaker and weaker. You can see in the first generation— Chairman Mao’s generation, Castro’s generation—the first revolutionaries are strong characters, maybe crazy but a bit romantic. Idealistic. Now you see nothing. They cannot even remember what
64 their ancestors said.

PLAYBOY:Along with your Twitter messages, is your art largely a result of frustration with the current political system?

AI: I’m a person who likes to make an argument rather than just give emotion or expression a form and shape in art. I became an artist only because I was oppressed by society. I was born into a very political society. When I was a child, my father told me, as a joke, “You can be a politician.” I was 10 years old. I didn’t understand it, because I already knew that politicians were the enemy, the ones who crushed him. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. But now I understand. I can be political. I can say something even though we grew up without true education, memorizing Chairman Mao’s slogans. I memorized hundreds of them. I can still sing his songs, recite his poetry. Every morning at school we stood in front of his image, memorizing one of his sentences telling what we should do today to make ourselves a better person.

[Source]

Ai also discusses his venture into the medium of rock and roll, calling heavy metal music “poetry within a storm.” This morning, he posted a new heavy metal music video to his website in which he recreates scenes of his 2011 detention:

Click here to view the embedded video.

[Source]

Ai told The New York Times that he made the video and related music album because he “wanted to do something impossible:”

“It’s about the whole condition,” he said in an interview at his studio last week after showing final cuts of the video to a reporter and a photographer. “It’s not really about me. I think it’s about how the power of the state tries to manage and maintain this kind of control.”

Mr. Ai wrote the lyrics in one morning. He asked a friend, the rocker and contemporary artist Zuoxiao Zuzhou, to handle the music. Six songs are expected to be released together in an album called “The Divine Comedy” on June 22, the second anniversary of Mr. Ai’s exit from detention. The video was shot by the cinematographer Christopher Doyle, an Australian resident of Hong Kong who is best known for his work with Wong Kar-wai, a director of highly stylized films, and Zhang Yimou, who has in recent years been a favorite of the Communist Party.

Near his studio Mr. Ai has created a full-scale model of the austere room in which he was kept for much of his time in detention. He said the actual prison was in western Beijing and was used to house prominent detainees.

[Source]

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei detention, Beijing, detention, dissidents, music
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

SPIEGEL: How have you been lately?

Ai: In general I am fine; my situation is as good as anybody else’s. It is still difficult but that’s because I want to put up a fight. I could have a more comfortable life if I gave up on this, and so could my relatives, my friends and state security.

SPIEGEL: Why don’t you want this?

Ai: Because I can’t feel comfortable if I have to give up my — and other people’s –rights for that. If I have to ignore injustice that I simply cannot ignore. My world is so connected to the world of others, how can I pretend I don’t know about those things? […]

SPIEGEL: Outside of China you are not only known for your art and your tweets, but also because you frequently speak to foreign journalists. How would you describe your relationship with the Western media?

Ai: Journalists are professionals. They look at the truth the way doctors look at it — not like a patient. As an artist I try to maintain the truth on a level where it can be more easily shared and accepted. Art has to be innocent. Journalists have to make judgements. That’s why they covered the tragic Boston attacks widely, but didn’t cover the 122 Tibetans who have immolated themselves over the past months. And that’s why many of you write about my struggle but not about the struggle of others.

SPIEGEL: Do you think you are getting too much media attention?

Ai: It certainly raises my responsibility. […] [Source]

Ai and Zand also discuss Ai’s participation in the Venice Bienniale in June, his personal circumstances in China, and why “if I was a Western politician, I probably would like dictators, too.” The artist has recently branched out into bad hairdressing and, like the Ministry of Public Security, is also taking aim at China’s repeated milk safety scandals. Meanwhile, his Sunflower Seeds have returned to London in an unofficial exhibition of seeds stolen from previous showings.

At Tea Leaf Nation, Shi Yunhan reports Mo Yan’s professed hope that the Nobel spotlight will soon fade, allowing him to return to writing in relative obscurity. Shi quotes from Mo’s recent speech at the 2nd Sino-Australian Literary Forum in Beijing:

Whether or not I deserved the Nobel Prize, I already received it, and now it’s time to get back to my writing desk and produce a good work. I hear that the 2013 list of Nobel Prize nominees has been finalized. I hope that once the new laureate is announced, no one will pay attention to me anymore.

[…] The prize money does not come out of taxpayers’ pockets, so I don’t have such responsibilities. I hate partisan politics and how people gang up on opponents based on ideology. I like to come and go on my own, which allows me to look on from the sidelines with a clear mind and gain insight about the world and the human condition. I don’t have the capability or interest of becoming a politician. I just want to write, quietly, and do some charity work in secret.

[…] It is not surprising to hear Mo Yan point out that a Nobel laureate has no technical obligations for increased social activism. Even before he won the Nobel Prize, Mo Yan spoke negatively on the public duties that can come with literary awards. It is also in line with his pen name, which means “don’t speak” in Chinese. The phrase refers to an ancient saying calling ordinary people to refrain from speaking out in public, especially on state affairs. However, now that he is China’s first officially acknowledged Nobel laureate, his sincere desire for a low-profile openly runs against his adoption by the Chinese government as a national symbol and source of pride. [Source]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, artists, journalism, media, mo yan, Nobel Prize, self-immolations, social responsibility, western media
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

SPIEGEL: [… Y]ou have been permitted to travel to Berlin where you have an exhibition opening and will soon be part of an exhibition at the Museum for Asian Art. How is that possible?

Zhao: Perhaps I am creating the impression that I am no longer such a major troublemaker.

SPIEGEL: Is that impression correct?

Zhao: One or two years ago, it was hardly possible for me to exhibit my work. Since then, I have been trying to be more of an artist and less of an activist. I have my language as an artist. In July I had another show in Beijing, but we didn’t know until the last minute whether another ban would be imposed. On the day of the opening, we darkened the gallery rooms and the guests couldn’t see my work — or at least only with the light of their mobile phones.

[…] SPIEGEL: In Berlin, you are also showing a painting that shows Ai Weiwei in an interrogation situation. It’s astounding that you’ve been able to take it out of the country.

Zhao: I don’t know how my art dealer did that.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, art exhibitions, artistic freedom, artists, berlin, Germany
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A Global Times editorial welcomed Pinault’s donation:

It remains fresh in the minds of the Chinese people that four years ago, the two bronze heads were auctioned by Christie’s, triggering a round of verbal conflict between China and France. [Christie's is owned by PPR/Kering, of which Pinault is CEO.] But now, that the French offer to return the two pieces of Chinese treasure is a tremendous turn-around.

[…] Pinault and his stance on behalf of the French people should be appreciated.

In fact, after the 2009 auction of the two bronze heads in which a Chinese buyer won the bid but refused to pay the money, 80 percent of French people, according to a survey conducted by Le Figaro, were in favor of returning these sculptures back to their place of origin.

It is true that friendliness between two countries cannot come from nowhere. But the slight change that saw the two bronze heads “donated” instead of being “bought” back is a strong one.

Pinault’s gesture may not have been purely one of friendship, however. From Nadya Masidlover in Paris and Jason Chow at The Wall Street Journal:

The decision to return the statues comes as PPR—soon to be renamed Kering—seeks to further develop its business in China. The company—whose brands also include Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent and Puma—has redefined its business in recent years around luxury and lifestyle labels, shedding many assets and acquiring others in a bid to tap into fast-growing consumer spending in emerging markets and notably in China.

In Friday’s statement, Mr. Pinault and his family highlighted their businesses’ “considerable presence in China.” PPR does close to 10% of its business in mainland China.

The move also follows the Chinese government’s decision to grant a license to Christie’s, making it the first international fine art auction house to operate independently in mainland China, based in Shanghai. Previously, Christie’s was restricted to a licensing deal with a local Chinese auction house. Christie’s said it expects to hold its first sale this autumn.

See more on the new Christie’s license at CDT.

At The New York Times, Edward Wong and Steven Erlanger explained the Zodiac heads’ heavy symbolism, both historic and more recent:

“It is easy to forget, watching China emerge as a great power, that the legacy of humiliation at the hands of modern imperialist aggressors back in the 19th century retains a palpable sense of immediacy even today,” said John Delury, a historian at Yonsei University in Seoul who, with Orville Schell, is writing a book on China’s quest for wealth and power. “So what might seem a rather obscure gesture of returning a pair of bronze animal heads takes on outsized significance as a kind of restitution of historical justice, a long-awaited righting of wrongs to the Chinese nation.”

[…] The two bronzes, a rat head and a rabbit head, were among 12 animal heads, replicating the Chinese zodiac, in a central fountain clock at the palace, spewing water to tell time. All disappeared after the palace, also known as Yuanmingyuan and used by rulers of the Qing dynasty, was destroyed by Western troops in 1860.

So iconic are the animal heads that Ai Weiwei, the rebel artist, made a sculpture with versions of all 12. Typical of Mr. Ai, the sculpture was constructed with a sense of irony. It was first displayed in May 2011 at the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan while Mr. Ai was being illegally detained in Beijing by security forces, and it quickly came to symbolize the constant conflict in China over issues of free speech.

According to CRI International, “by the end of 2012, the heads of ox, tiger, monkey, pig and horse had been brought back to China and are being kept by The China Poly Group. The dragon head is reportedly in Taiwan, while the heads of snake, sheep, rooster, and dog still remain missing.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Christie's, France, France relations, luxury goods, sculpture, the Summer Palace
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Petitioner Hu Cheng from Chongqing has bought the phone numbers of several Beijing-based foreign news organizations, at 100 yuan each. He calls them repeatedly.

He tells them how he was locked up by the police while petitioning and they broke his legs. He cries on the phone while telling the story. Chinese news assistants answer the phone. They listen, and show sympathy, but seem to have no interest in publishing his story.

[…] “When those petitioners feel that they can’t have their voices heard by the authorities and the chance of solving problems is small, foreign media seems to be their last hope,” Jin Yong, deputy professor of China Communication University, told the Global Times.

[…] Zhang Chi, producer of VRT, the Belgian Dutch language public broadcaster, […] said blind barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng and artist Ai Weiwei are among the few people who have their voices heard through intense international news coverage and benefited from it.

See more on petitioners via CDT, including the sympathetic perspective of a former interceptor who was employed to stop them.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Chen Guangcheng, foreign correspondents, news media, petitioners
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Beijing police detained Liu Hui on Jan. 31, just before the Lunar New Year and a planned family reunion, and formally charged him two weeks ago over a real estate dispute, lawyer Mo Shaoping said Thursday. He said the criminal charges were unwarranted in a business dispute that has since been resolved.

Liu Hui’s arrest is the latest blow to the family and, Mo said, is particularly painful for his sister, Liu Xia, the wife of democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo. He was imprisoned in late 2008, and ever since he was awarded the Nobel prize two-and-a-half years ago, Liu Xia has been under house arrest. Isolated in an apartment with no phone or Internet, she appears emotionally fragile, allowed only weekly visits with family members and a monthly visit to her husband in prison.

[…] Pu [Zhiqiang], the lawyer and Liu family friend, said arresting and prosecuting Liu Hui in an ordinary business dispute fits a pattern of selectively using the law to harass activists and their families. The artist and prominent government critic Ai Weiwei has faced tax charges, for example, rather than a direct attack against his activism. “State security is increasingly using selective enforcement of the law,” Pu said.

Morillo suggests that Liu’s prosecution may have been prompted by two incidents in December, in which first an AP team and then a group of activists managed to break through the security cordon around his sister’s apartment.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, fraud, liu xia, Liu Xiaobo, Mo Shaoping, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, pu zhiqiang
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Q. The movie shows you approaching state security surveillance agents assigned to tail you and trying to talk with them. Why do that?

A. I always think we have nothing to hide, so I want them to know that. Normally people, when they are being followed, are being intimidated or they are scared. So I always say: “If you are looking for me, we can sit down to talk. You can even come to my office, I’ll just give you a table. You’ll see whoever I see, and if I travel, I will name you as my assistant, so whoever I meet, you will also meet. So tell your boss that this is an opportunity to get a close look at this very dangerous guy named as a subversive of state power.”

Q. Here in the West confrontations like that, just like everything else you do, are seen as a type of performance art. Is this an accurate assessment?

A. I wouldn’t say it’s a form of performance art. It is expression, but not one designed for a show. It’s dangerous, it’s very frustrating, and it’s real life. It’s a way to survive, and it’s a way to announce yourself to those people. Because you don’t want them to look at you as scared. Most people would just give up, and that makes the power unshakably strong. I’m trying to tell the workers or the young people you can insist on your own rights.

Q. So at this juncture do you consider yourself to be primarily an artist or a political activist?

A. I’m not very conscious of or think about either position. I lead my life, which is quite dense, with all kinds of political and social concerns and a lot of so-called cultural or art activities. They integrate with each other, that’s always kind of necessary for me. It’s like when you walk, you breathe, but you’re not necessarily concerned about breathing. But when you walk under difficult conditions, like climbing a mountain, then you realize you have to catch your breath. So my activities are more or less like that.

Watch a trailer of the documentary:

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, activists, Ai Weiwei, documentaries
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The singer’s remarks even prompted the culture minister, Cai Wu, to demand that only stars with university degrees be allowed to play in China in future, according to two sources. They said that days after the concert, Cai gathered those who deal with visiting foreign artists and announced that only graduates should be given performance licences. One source said officials believed it would be difficult to implement the edict, and both suggested it may have been a spur of the moment comment.

[…] Another source said that since the start of the year, classical musicians had been required to supply proof of degrees and other qualifications when applying for permission to tour China. “There is no doubt at all it has made things harder,” said one of those with knowledge of the meeting, adding that several recent applications for licences had been rejected.

“They are looking closely at videos, making sure that the people on stage are exactly the same as in the visa applications, and so on. It’s not a change in the rules as much as a tightening [of existing procedures].”

Prominent artists touring in China may be stuck between a rock critic and a hard place: between censure from China for making “disrespectful” political gestures, and Western condemnation for failing to. Bob Dylan faced harsh criticism in 2011 for alleged self-censorship at Chinese concerts, which according to Maureen Dowd at The New York Times was “a whole new kind of sellout — even worse than […] Elton John raking in a fortune to serenade gay-bashers at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Bob dylan, foreign music, musicians, self-censorship, visa, visa laws
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Abstract: China’s particular form of social stability is one of ‘rigid stability’ that is intimately connected with its authoritarian regime. This form of ‘rigid stability’ is maintained via a mechanism of ‘stability preservation through pressure’. In practice, ‘stability preservation through pressure’ is confronted by many challenges, including intensified conflicts of interest, various policy flaws related stability preservation, the development of information technology and increasing rights consciousness among citizens. A new line of thinking is currently needed in regard to stability preservation, with rights protection as its precursor and foundation. ‘Rigid stability’ must give way to ‘resilient stability’, ‘static stability’ must yield to ‘dynamic stability’, and ‘stability preservation’ must become ‘stability creation’.

In an increasingly open and democratic nation, true stability is unattainable through reliance upon the coercive and heavy-handed measures of the Mao era. Stability preservation during sensitive times of social conflict demands more than wise governance; it also requires that stability be rethought to fit the present stage of social development.

Yu’s vision for reform earned him a place on Foreign Policy magazine’s 2012 list of “Great Global Thinkers”, behind Chen Guangcheng and Ai Weiwei. At the South China Morning Post, The University of Nottingham’s Andreas Fulda described the marked contrast between Yu and Ai, concluding that “establishment intellectuals like Yu are the people the West must learn to work with if it wishes to encourage political reform in China.”

Yu, an establishment intellectual, is an unlikely poster boy for the Chinese democracy movement. He is a patriot first, a democrat second. His position on the East China Sea islands territorial dispute between China and Japan is emphatically nationalistic, much to the frustration of his liberal supporters within China, and in his 10-year plan he does not advocate civilian control of the Chinese military, as most other liberals in China do.

In contrast, outspoken libertarian activists like Liu Xiaobo and artist Ai Weiwei are clear-cut reformers, railing at government control from outside the system. Their cause offers a compelling narrative to the West. But the strong focus on activists outside the system comes at the expense of people like Yu, who are prepared to straddle both sides. Establishment intellectuals need to walk a fine line between their reformist aspirations and the existing political realities in China.

[…] Due to the repression of reformers outside the system, policymakers dealing with China should recognise that more people like Yu will grow in influence in the years to come. This may be challenging. These patriots will first and foremost stand up for China’s interests, yet the reality is that this is fairly representative of popular thinking in modern China.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, defending rights, diaoyu islands, information technology, Liu Xiaobo, reform, social stability, stability maintenance, stability preservation, territorial disputes, Yu Jianrong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Li Ning (李凝) the Body Art Guerrilla Group, Made-in-J Town (凌雲焰肢體游擊隊), are among one of the most interesting groups. Recently, they released three action art performances from 2008 through Youtube. The year of the Beijing Olympics - 2008 – dissent voices in the country faced the harshest repression. The 11-year imprisonment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, because of his Charter 08 initiative, is the most well-known example. These videos from 2008 give a glimpse into the resistance culture among young people in China.

[…] 2008 is the year of Beijing Olympic. In order to show the strength of the country, demolition had taken place in all major cities. Even though Jinan was not the hosting city, the scale of demolition and re-development had been huge. Li Ning and Body Art Guerrilla Group, Made-in-J Town, produced a short video showing the Olympic Torch relay in Jinan and the demolition. In the video, Li Ning performs the flesh and blood in the demolition scene, which creates a sharp contrast with the propaganda of the torch relay.

See Li Ning’s works (Warning: NSFW):

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, Ai Weiwei, art, artists, contemporary artists, forced demolitions, freedom of expression, Shandong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Authorities in Shaoyang city in central Hunan province told family members of Zhu Chengzhi, 62, last Friday that he would be put under “residential surveillance” under “Article 73″, Zhu’s wife, Zeng Qiulian, told Reuters by telephone on Monday. Article 73 legalizes detaining people in secret.

[…] Article 73 legalizes a practice that began in earnest in 2011. Fearing that anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world could inspire challenges to Communist rule, the government unlawfully held dozens of activists, including artist Ai Weiwei, for weeks or months in secret detention.

[…] Police had charged Zhu with “incitement to subvert state power” after he posted photos online following the death of his friend, Li Wangyang, who was found in a hospital ward in Shaoyang, his neck tied with a noose made from cotton bandages.

Authorities said it was suicide – a verdict that angered thousands of scholars, lawyers and activists.

See more on Li’s case via CDT. Zhu had already been held for over six months since his detention on June 9th, days after Li’s death. A fuller account of Zhu’s story is available at the Dui Hua Human Rights Journal:

Public criticism over the “disappearance clauses” may have ultimately contributed to some salutary changes to the legislation, including the removal of exemptions for providing notification of residential surveillance (but not carrying out residential surveillance in a designated residence). Under the revised CPL, which took effect on January 1, 2013, police are thus required to give notice to relatives within 24 hours of all individuals being subjected to “non-residential residential surveillance.” This limits the ability of police to make an individual disappear without a trace, but the practice of non-residential residential surveillance remains deeply problematic, even though its inclusion in the CPL has given it a veneer of legitimacy.

This situation is illustrated by the case of Zhu Chengzhi, who, according to Zhu’s defense lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, is likely to be the first person in China to be placed in this form of residential surveillance (the number of the notice issued by local police is “A01”) since the new CPL took effect earlier this month. Zhu, age 62, was detained in June 2012 by police in Shaoyang, Hunan, after he allegedly disseminated information that raised doubts about local authorities’ official finding of suicide in the death of his friend and long-time political prisoner Li Wangyang (李旺阳). After reportedly refusing to sign a guarantee that he would cease his efforts to draw attention to suspicions surrounding Li’s death, Zhu was placed under criminal detention on suspicion of “inciting subversion,” charges for which he was formally arrested on July 25, 2012.

After five months of incommunicado detention, Zhu’s case was transferred to prosecutors on December 25. On January 4 (the first day of business for Chinese government offices following the New Year’s Day holiday), Zhu’s wife, Zeng Qiulian, retained Liu Xiaoyuan to represent her husband. That same day, the Shaoyang People’s Procuratorate handed the case back to police for additional investigation, and police decided to place Zhu under residential surveillance and delivered an official notification (translated below) to his wife.

See more on the controversy over Article 73 and other CPL amendments via CDT, including reactions from cartoonists and weibo users.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Article 73, criminal procedure law, detention, Hunan, incitement, li wangyang, Liu Xiaoyuan, subversion, Zhu Chengzhi
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, censorship, parody
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Ai Weiwei holding a grass-mud horse stuffed animal over his crotch. Combining the obscenity “grass-mud horse” and Ai Weiwei’s action (blocking the center of his crotch), this image conveys the meaning, “Fuck you, Party Central Committee!”

If you are interested in participating in this project by submitting and/or translating terms, please contact the CDT editors at CDT [at] chinadigitaltimes [dot] net.

档/裆/挡中央 (Dàng/Dāng/Dàng Zhōngyāng): Central Committee of the Communist Party

Instead of the character for “Party,” 党 (dǎng), other characters that sound similar are used. These characters, 档, 裆, and 挡, mean “file,” “crotch,” and “to block,” respectively. The real character is not used because netizens feel it is a loaded term, and perhaps also for fear of it attracting online censors.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, CCP Central Committee, grass-mud horse, word of the week
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chen shocked the world in April when he made a daring, next-to-impossible escape, climbing over the wall surrounding his house (breaking his foot in the process) and catching a ride some 350 miles to Beijing, where he took refuge in the U.S. Embassy. After a tense, days-long diplomatic standoff closely involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (No. 3), a deal was struck under which Chen would be allowed to travel to the United States to study. Now at New York University, Chen has embraced his new role as an evangelist for human rights, making the case that incremental change — one village or even one person at a time — can eventually transform a superpower. Against all odds, he remains optimistic, believing that China, taking a cue from Japan and South Korea, must “learn Eastern democracy.” He even thinks it’s inevitable: “Nobody can stop the progress of history,” he says.

An interview with Chen Guangcheng by Isaac Stone Fish accompanies the list. In it, Chen discusses how the central government allows abuses by local authorities—see Guizhou journalist Li Yuanlong’s detention last week for a recent example—and the chances of change or even revolution in China’s near future.

The central government definitely knew I was illegally detained at home. As for how the local authorities invented lies to frame me to put me in prison, as for how they persecuted my entire family, [the central government] didn’t necessarily know about the details. Yet now, six months later, I still haven’t seen the central government follow the country’s laws and keep its promise and investigate and deal with those officials who recklessly and illegally committed crimes.

Throughout Chinese history, has any emperor said they want to hand over power? Every emperor wants his power to last generation after generation. But can they? The Communist Party cannot monopolize all of the power in the country forever. This is a reality they must accept.

The possibility of China facing a revolution in 2013 is pretty big. This is something that the powers that be in China understand more than anyone else. It’s a pity that international society still does not understand this and has still not prepared. America should immediately start moving from dealing with China’s powers that be to dealing with the Chinese people. It definitely won’t be like 1989.

Chen does not appear to view the possibility of revolution with any great relish: when asked what the worst idea of the year is, he answered “violence”.

Controversial artist Ai Weiwei, still unable to leave China over a year after his 81-day detention in 2011, is ranked 26th:

[…] Ai has found ways to occupy his time. When one of his Twitter followers asked in May whether he was working on any new artwork, Ai tweeted back, “I am the artwork.” In April, he set up cameras throughout his house, providing a live feed on his website and to his 170,000 followers. (“Twitter is my city, my favorite city,” he told FP this year.) The authorities soon pressured him into removing the cameras, evidently preferring that they be the only ones to watch the rotund 55-year-old work on his computer and play with his cats.

But make no mistake — this performance art is deeply political. Throughout his career Ai has insisted that artists have a duty to humanity that outweighs the obligations of nationalism. Even declaring one’s opposition to “trafficking children, selling HIV-infected blood, [and] operating slave labor coal pits” is enough to get branded as “anti-China” in today’s political climate, Ai once noted on his blog, asking, “If we aren’t anti-China, are we still human?”

Foreign Policy also published a slideshow from Ai’s first North American retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., noting that “the artist was not in attendance.”

British singer Elton John added a concert dedication to Ai’s list of recent accolades on Sunday. While dismissing this “disrespectful” gesture, Global Times took the opportunity to critique Chen and Ai’s inclusion in the Foreign Policy list:

Western society is seriously biased against China. When US magazine Foreign Policy compiled a list of 100 global thinkers from around the world, the first Chinese on that list was blind activist Chen Guangcheng, and the second was Ai Weiwei. Even to Chinese people who have sympathy for these two people, this list may seem ridiculous.

In a diverse era, we don’t hold that the existence of people like Chen and Ai is unexpected in China. Also, we don’t believe that the impact they have brought should be denied completely.

The selection of Chen and Ai makes people wonder whether the word “thinker” in Chinese and English have different meanings. We can just say that some Westerners are increasingly unable to contain themselves over China’s rise. They cannot control China through normal means and they are more likely to rush their fences.

A more nuanced piece of Aiconoclasm came last week from Paul Gladston at Randian:

There are […] significant dangers in the upholding of Ai as our sole representative/mediator of artistic resistance to authority within China. While Ai’s bluntly confrontational and often bombastic stance can be readily digested within Western liberal-democratic contexts where romantic notions of heroic dissent in the face of overwhelming power still persist, it is by no means representative of the critical positioning of most other Chinese artists. Ai may have situated himself admirably behind enlightened westernized ideals of freedom and openness, but the sheer bluntness and reductive simplicity of his critical approach to authority have effectively foreclosed a more searching discussion of contemporary art within China as well as the complex, web of localized cultural, social, political and economic forces that surround its production and reception.

[…] Ai Weiwei is right in drawing our repeated attention to the debilitating injustices of totalitarian power within China. He is also right to upbraid western viewers for their inability to see past what are for them the pleasurable ambiguities of contemporary Chinese art. Less convincing, however, is Ai’s wholly reductive view of the critical possibilities of contemporary art in China. By insisting on his own stridently oppositional approach towards power as the only legitimate game in town, and because we are already highly familiar with that approach, [he] has misrepresented the contemporary Chinese artworld. One might add that Ai is also romanticizing the conditions of criticality in the West.

At 54 in the Foreign Policy list is Yu Jianrong, for his concise but detailed roadmap for reform.

In April, he released a succinct, two-phase plan he called a “10-Year Outline of China’s Social and Political Development.” Despite its bland title, Yu’s blueprint offers a timetable for Chinese reform that for once is as credible as it is ambitious. The plan puts dates and specifics to the task, advocating, for example, a stronger law on private property, the revealing of “information pertaining to government affairs” and “officials’ property,” and the abolition of “speech crimes,” after which China should “open up” the media and political parties. Yu’s short manifesto immediately caused a splash when he released it to his nearly 1.5 million followers on the popular microblogging site Sina Weibo (though the government has maintained a deafening silence). “We’ve already decided to change,” Yu explained in an interview. “The question is: In which direction do we change, and from where do we start?” Sweeping reform in this authoritarian land of 1.3 billion won’t be easy, but Yu’s plan is as good a place to begin as any. The era, he said, of crossing the river “by feeling the stones” is over.

China Media Project’s David Bandurski translated Yu’s plan in March. Soon afterwards, Didi Kirsten Tatlow described it at The International Herald Tribune, together with some criticism from Tsinghua University political scientist Liu Yu:

Master plans like Mr. Kang [Youwei]’s, or Mr. Yu’s are “unrealistic,” she said.

“All Chinese intellectuals, especially the men, they tend to blur the line with being an official and then they’re thinking, ‘How should I design a system for the country?’ and ‘How to make progress?’

“In the West there are intellectuals who make proposals on specific things, but in general they don’t make plans for the whole country,” she said.

What is needed instead, she believes, is a broad debate, among ordinary people.

“A good plan should involve the whole society,” she said. “There should be a big debate on where the country should be going.”

Yu’s nomination for best idea of 2012 is Mo Yan’s controversial selection for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mo’s chief rival for the award, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, took 49th place on the Foreign Policy list as a consolation prize.

At 69 is environmentalist Ma Jun:

[…] A journalist turned environmentalist who founded the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, Ma applies scientific rigor to exposing such corporate violations (more than 90,000 to date), flagging everything from a small coal-tar factory improperly storing its dangerous waste to Apple suppliers poisoning workers with a toxic chemical used on touch screens — as well as local governments that flout environmental regulations across China. Dozens of major multinationals now consult Ma’s pollution readings when working with suppliers in China. And by documenting environmental violations that had long been obvious but were never compiled in a way the public could easily understand, Ma has given statistical ammunition to Chinese citizens trying to nudge the Communist Party into cleaning up its act.

Wang Jisi, “China’s most respected expert on the United States”, came in at 73:

[…] What does Wang want us to know? That the feel-good stories U.S. officials tell themselves about China’s global ascent are an elaborate form of denial. In an influential monograph co-authored by Brookings Institution senior fellow Kenneth Lieberthal, Wang this year described China’s actions on the world stage as rooted in the conclusion that “America will seek to constrain or even upset China’s rise.” Beijing’s view, he says, is that the United States is “heading for decline” and that China’s development model provides an “alternative to Western democracy and market economies.” The result? “[T]hese views make many Chinese political elites suspect that it is the United States,” Wang says, “that is ‘on the wrong side of history.’”

And at 83 is the Taiwanese-American former head of Google China, venture capitalist Kai-fu Lee:

In an article he published on his LinkedIn page in October, Lee named China’s narrowly focused school curriculum and the risk-averse nature of Chinese students, as well as the country’s chaotic Internet environment, among the reasons China hasn’t yet produced its own Mark Zuckerberg. That may be why he has also started a popular education website encouraging Chinese students to think more creatively. Although none of his companies has exploded yet, Lee’s ultimate contribution may be more fundamental: laying both the intellectual and financial groundwork for a revolution in the world’s largest online community.

Perhaps more significant to China for now than any of the above are Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, who top the list having begun to pilot the formerly reliable Chinese satellite of Myanmar (also known as Burma) into a more open and international orbit:

Aung San Suu Kyi, the soft-spoken, iconic political activist whom devotees call simply “the Lady,” may not seem like an obvious partner for Thein Sein, but she has become one by doing what few legends of her stature can: embracing the messy pragmatism of politics. Although Burma’s struggles are far from over — she has warned that international investment has been too rapid, and ethnic violence is escalating — the willingness of both the Lady and the general to embrace short-term compromise and foster long-term reconciliation in what was only recently one of the world’s most isolated countries is something to celebrate.

Fittingly, Aung San Suu Kyi finally was able to accept her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in June. She used the occasion to remind the world of those like her, who struggle in the most forlorn places: “To be forgotten too is to die a little. It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.” It is a sentiment still felt from Aleppo to Havana, Pyongyang to Tehran, but also, as Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein have shown, one that doesn’t need to be permanent.

See more on Chen Guangcheng, Ai Weiwei, Yu Jianrong, Ma Jun, Wang Jisi, Kai-fu Lee and Myanmar/Burma at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Apple, artistic freedom, artists, Burma, central government, Chen Guangcheng, contemporary art, contemporary artists, education, Global Times, Google, Haruki Murakami, Hillary Clinton, HIV, house arrest, IPE, Kaifu Lee, kenneth lieberthal, Li Yuanlong, local government, Ma Jun, mo yan, Myanmar, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel Prize, pollution, private property, reform, reformers, revolution, slave labor, surveillance, trafficking, transparency, wang jisi, year end lists 2012, Yu Jianrong
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Zhai Xiaobing with Ai Weiwei.

Even beyond China’s Great Firewall, Twitter is not always a safe haven for the country’s more outspoken critics. Just before the 18th Party Congress began, Zhai Xiaobing, a fund manager in Beijing, was arrested for a tweet deemed to “spread false terrorist information” (涉嫌散布虚假恐怖信息):

#剧透推 #慎入 死神来了6即将上映。大会堂突然倒塌，正在开会的2000多人只有7人幸免，事后却又一一离奇死亡。是上帝的游戏，还是死神的怒火，神秘数字18怎样开启地狱之门？11月8日全球院线震撼登场！

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) November 5, 2012

#SpoilerTweet #Enter-at-your-own-peril “Final Destination 6” has arrived. In which the Great Hall of the People collapses all of a sudden. All 2,000+ people meeting there died except for 7 of them. But afterwards, the seven die one after another in bizarre ways. Is it a game of God, or the wrath of Death? How will 18, the mysterious number, unlock the gate of Hell? Premieres globally on November the 8th to bring you an earthshaking experience! (translated by Yaxue Cao)

Zhai has not been released since his November 7 detention. An online petition [zh] for his release, signed by prominent Chinese activists such as Ai Weiwei and Hu Jia, has collected 419 signatures as of this posting. “We hope the the Beijing police shows a sense of humor and do not create a big incident out of a small issue,” writes petition author Bei Feng (Wen Yunchao). “In particular, do not ruin the image of the new leadership soon after the 18th Party Congress.” Zhai’s is not the first Twitter-related arrest in China.

Zhai, whose Twitter handle is @Stariver, studied ancient (pre-Qin) literature at Peking University, and formerly worked in the media. His acerbic tweets make no excuses for the violence and corruption in China, while images of armed police in Lhasa streets and protests in Hong Kong against patriotic education mingle with cat and food photos. Yaxue Cao of Seeing Red in China writes, “In Twitter’s Chinese community, @Stariver is known for his cool and biting comments about current events in China that cut the froth and burst false ‘hopes.’ He is also known for the depth of his knowledge in classics.”

CDT Chinese has collected some of Zhai’s more urgent tweets, translated here by Mengyu Dong:

如果不是为了生物多样性的考虑，我相信上帝不会造出“中国人民的老朋友”这种畜牲。

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) October 16, 2012

Stariver: If not in consideration of biodiversity, I believe God wouldn’t have created those beasts, the “old friends of the Chinese people.”

各级网警和小秘书团结协作，众志成城，投身救灾抢险工作，将受灾死亡人数牢牢控制在37人，用青春热血谱写了一曲忠诚的赞歌。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) July 25, 2012

Stariver: All levels of Internet policemen and little secretaries coordinated together, used their united will as strength and devoted to disaster relief work. They kept the number of victims to 37, and composed a faithful song of praise with their youth and ardor.

Noticing that the death toll was reported at 37 for multiple incidents across China this summer, netizens call this the “Law of 37” (死亡37定律). Zhai wrote this tweet soon after the Beijing flood.

人民日报的任务是把中国打扮成白富美，全球都不如它牛逼；环球时报的任务是把中国打扮成迫害狂，全球都是针对中国的阴谋陷害；新闻联播的任务是把中国打扮成班干部，德智体美劳全面发展，还能一帮一一对红。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) July 26, 2012

Stariver: The task of the People’s Daily is to dress up China as “white, rich, and beautiful,” the f**king best in the world; the task of the Global Times is to dress up China as a paranoid, as if the whole world is scheming against it; the task of Xinwen Lianbo is to dress up China as a class leader who is moral, intelligent, physically fit, tasteful and socially responsible, and can pair up with partners and help each other to develop.

文革暴力，是匪帮组织暴力对于底层民众的裹挟，是极端程序邪恶和实质邪恶对普遍人性黑暗面的强力激发，对此不了解，就是历史愚昧；民间暴力，是对匪帮利益勒索和国家机器暴力镇压的反抗，是在程序正义无可诉求之下的最后防线，对此的否定，就是现实无耻。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) July 28, 2012

Stariver: The violence of the Cultural Revolution was the coercion of the lowest in society by organized gangs, the brutal excitation of humanity’s dark side by essential and programmatic evil. Whoever does not understand this is ignorant of history. The violence among the people is revolt against extortion by gangs and the brutal oppression of the state apparatus, the final line of defense in a system where it is impossible to appeal for justice. Whoever denies this is truly shameless.

官场小说的流行源于受众对中国政治“宫廷模式”神秘感的追求，对政治黑帮斗争之“阴谋艺术”和官商经济权力寻租的崇拜。它唯一想要证明的，就是官场规则的合理性。

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) June 19, 2012

Stariver: The popularity of novels about official circles originates from reader’s pursuit of the mystique of China’s “court” politics, the worship of the “art of conspiracy” in struggles among political gangs, as well as the worship of rent-seeking among politician and businessmen. The only thing it intends to prove is the rationality of officialdom’s rules.

RT @stariver要是有人一边端着碗吃屎，一边埋怨桌子没擦干净，你一定认为他是个傻逼。要是一个人一边无视当局的暴力，一边对民间行为表现出理中客的洁癖，他就是个吃屎还埋怨桌子不干净的傻逼。

— 那谁谁 (@na_sheishei) July 9, 2012

Stariver: If someone eats from a bowl of crap he is clutching, yet at the same time complains that the table is not clean, you’ll definitely figure him for a loon. If someone ignores the atrocity of state power, yet shows pathological concern for the cleanliness of the people’s conduct, then he is the loon who eats crap and complains about the dirtiness of the table.

Stariver: 9.18子曰：“吾未见好德如好色者也。”～孔丘局长说：我就没见过在小姐面前还能坚持原则的。#论语今译#   Stariver: (9.18) Confucius said: “I have not seen one who loves virtue as much as he loves beauty.” ~ Bureau Director Confucius said: I have not seen someone who can uphold his principles in the presence of a hooker. #ModernAnalects#

重庆打黑成果表明，在任何地方以任何方式惩治任何党员干部，都可以得到人民群众的拥护。 — 星河舰队 (@Stariver) March 19, 2012

Stariver: The outcome of the “beat black” in Chongqing shows that people support any punishment of any cadre, regardless of when, where, or how. –Chinese re-tweet robot

牛 RT @stariver: 烈士求民主，今世壮心犹可励；英杰为自由，后生远志必行之。 — Jian Alan Huang (@hnjhj) April 8, 2012

Stariver: The martyr pursues democracy; those ambitious among us today will still find him encouraging. The hero seeks liberty; those idealists of tomorrow must pursue it.

每次倒烟灰的时候，我都觉得是在倒自己的骨灰。

— 星河舰队 (@Stariver) December 24, 2011

Stariver: Every time I throw away cigarette ashes, it feels like I’m dumping the ashes of my own bones.

First tweet translated by Yaxue Cao. Excerpts from petition translated by Oiwan Lam of Global Voices.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 18th party congress, Ai Weiwei, beat black, Bei Feng, censorship, Chongqing, Confucius, Cultural Revolution, Global Times, Hu Jia, Internet censorship, Peking University, people's daily, Twitter, Wen Yunchao, Xinwen Lianbo
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall