The Chinese Flag
I won’t summarize this for you. You have to read it.
In perhaps his most brazen defiance of Chinese authorities yet, Ai Weiwei has authored a piece for Newsweek that vividly describes the Kafka-esque quality of his life in Beijing under the current Chinese regime and gives his insider’s perspective on the plight of arrested dissidents.
In detention for 81 days, Ai was released on June 22, with requirements that he remain in Beijing. (He has.) He was also instructed not to talk to reporters or use social media. (He has done both, in defiance of these strictures.)
His personal ordeal has made Beijing, for him, “A nightmare. A constant nightmare,” as he said in his Newsweek piece.
For his own safety, I wish Ai would (if he can) leave. Through his increasingly bold provocations, he seems to be daring the authorities to silence him. I don’t want to see Alison Klayman‘s upcoming documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, morph into a memorial. I do want to see him succeed in his quixotic struggle to change China, but what are the odds that he will prevail? (Then again, what were the odds for regime change in the Middle East?)
I’m holding my breath, observing this tragic drama with horror and awe, as Ai’s life-and-death game plays out.