I've been out of China for a few weeks, on assignment elsewhere, and haven't been diligent with my blog duties. This will continue for a few more weeks. In the interim, I'm reposting an interview with Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist and political activist who was detained earlier this month.

(A New Yorker post with background on the situation and a contemplation of "Why Ai Weiwei Matters" can be found here. And the original version of the blog entry below is here.)

China and Ai Weiwei:

"We start to question: What is the quality of this state, this government?"

June 21, 2010

The first time I saw Ai Weiwei I was sitting in my Moscow apartment, watching CNN. There was a photograph of a burly artist dropping an ancient Chinese urn. A second photograph showed an equally ancient urn on which he’d painted the words “Coca-Cola.” 

Christiane Amanpour introduced him as a co-designer of Beijing's iconic Olympic Stadium, a vocal critic of the Chinese government and the son of Ai Qing, a renowned writer and Communist revolution supporter later denounced by the Party and sent to work camps. The elder Ai is now considered one of China’s most prominent modern poets.

 But it was this exchange that really hooked my interest:

Q: “How you can go in and out of China, especially when you speak so strongly against the government?”
Ai: “Yes, it's very hard to say. On the one hand, the prime minister would memorize my father's poetry in front of the great public, but on the other hand, the police were, you know, following me. So it's hard to say. You know, I was beaten almost for death.”

I made a mental note: Arrange an interview with Ai Weiwei.

In a nation of 1.3 billion people, Ai is a man apart. As an internationally known artist and domestic political provocateur, his ability so far to both speak out against the government and avoid prison is a high-wire act that has ended in disaster for others.   

His work turned increasingly political after the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, which left more than 80,000 people dead or missing. The earthquake killed more than 5,000 children -- many crushed in cheap, poorly built schools.

Ai organized a team of volunteers to scour the Sichuan countryside and compile a list of the names and basic information about the dead children. The volunteers were arrested more than 30 times, by Ai’s count.

When Ai showed up last year to testify in the trial of a fellow earthquake activist, local police detained and beat him. That fellow activist, Tan Zuoren, was later given five years – a sentence upheld by a provincial high court earlier this month.

Ai keeps a copy of the list of the children killed in the earthquake stretched across the wall of his office, and posts Twitter updates on their birthdays. (Ai can be followed on Twitter @aiww.)

He sat down recently to talk with me at his Beijing home. Because the life and times of Ai have been so thoroughly documented in the past -- links below -- I'm concentrating here on his thoughts about politics in today's China.

But in the spirit of Ai's call for transparency, the entire conversation can be downloaded by clicking here: Download WS320050.

(The text of the questions was edited for space.)

Q: Your public presence is a very transparent one in many ways – your constant Twitter feeds, interviews, videos, etc. Beyond the content of those things, is the transparency itself a message?

 “Very much so ... To deal with this power, or this authoritarian society, the strongest tool is to be transparent, to (be) very open, to try to start a conversation or a discussion or just throw out something which can generate this kind of motion. Transparency itself is the tool but also it’s the purpose (that) this tool is trying to achieve. So-called justice or fairness will never come if there’s no transparency.”

Q: How do you answer when government representatives ask why you do what you do?

“They realize I’m not hired by any foreign agency. I come from a family which started longer (ago) in the revolution than them, most of them. They’re influenced by my father’s poetry in the early time, in the 1930s, he also was in a nationalist jail, was also a Communist exile. So they couldn’t find why I’m doing it, they couldn’t find why I am identifying myself with somebody on the street. You know, this is just simply beyond their understanding – ‘Why do you care about this guy who's mistreated, I mean there’s really no association between you and him.’
So I try to explain to them we are all related, you know, if one is not free then none of us are free, this kind of very basic values. But still it seems (for) people hard to understand it, in China in general … I try to explain to them my ideas about freedom of speech, I think that’s good for everybody, for the state, for anybody.”
… “Secondly, you have to have a judicial system which is independent. And set up a rule, no matter how wrong the rule is, but we all have to follow the same rule. Otherwise you cannot start a game: you are a dealer, you are dealing the cards but you steal the cards, you change the rules all the time depend(ing) on what is in your hands. So nobody is going to play with you, then you lost your authority, then the whole situation becomes deteriorated and corrupt … that’s what (situation) today China is in.”

 Q: Do government officials accept your critiques as a kind of patriotism?

“No, they just shake their heads.”

Q: Your art about the earthquake has included a project where you spelled out a grieving mother’s words in backpacks and another marking birthdays on Twitter. Beyond the artistic statements, what’s the social statement?

“I think that in today’s China, after years of tragedies or this kind of totalitarian society, then the true value of a life, of an individual’s life is dismissed, it’s never been really announced.
So you often see, oh here you had a problem, 200 dead. And there you have a problem, 35 died. And then the earthquake, maybe 100,000 dead.
But nobody asks more than that -- Who are they? What’s their name? Which family (do) they belong to? How old are they? Which school are they in? And what really happened during their death? Then this, I think, reflects a nation, a race, (that) are trying to erase all those details which relate to a person who has a temperature, has color, and shapes ... I think that’s the only way people can be very cruel, it’s just (to) forget everything.
So I thought this is a very good idea, to start with those details, just trying to ask the simple question of who are they. Those people ... are victimized by those buildings. But instead to ask about the buildings, first we have to recognize who’s dead, what happened.”

Q: The headlines about your earthquake projects have been about the building quality of the schools, but is the recognition of the individuals who were killed in a way more threatening to the government?

“I think it’s more threatening … coming back to life itself, to how the state looks at the individual’s life, why those people are being ignored. And why they are covering up.
So all those questions are really stronger than those buildings’ qualities -- it’s the quality of the state. The whole state has (been) built on this doubtful construction, the whole system. So they are covering it (up). We are showing the people why they are covering it, and it shows how weak they are and how timid they are and how irrational they can be.
I think it’s so successful because we're not stuck on the argument of how the building quality is. We start to question: What is the quality of this state, this government? And in what kind of moral stand (are) those people are for? Why (are) they so afraid of this?”

Q: Is there a fundamental question of history and memory in China, particularly with issues such as the Cultural Revolution or Tiananmen Square? 

A: “I think it’s a nation purposely or intentionally trying to erase their past, the memory. At an earlier time they were ashamed of it ... then they (are) just trying to grab at whatever can make them survive, and would rather not have any discussion about it."

Ai’s website can be found at: http://www.aiweiwei.com/
A video about Ai and his photography in New York during the 1980s : http://alisonklayman.com/show_album.php?album=153238#8392368
The New Yorker profiled Ai earlier this year: http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2010-05-24#folio=054
A video of Ai discussing Twitter with Christiane Amanpour: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/03/17/twitter.amanpour.cnn