Ai Weiwei: “Drawn Into the Vortex of Politics”

Silence does not suit Ai Weiwei. Less than two months since emerging from police custody, China’s most famous artist has begun to probe the corners of his confines. When he was released in June, after two and a half months incommunicado, authorities said they were letting him go because he was ill and had confessed to tax evasion—they’d also weighed charging him with pornography and bigamy, according to state media—and he was warned to stop giving provocative interviews or using Twitter as a political signpost. So he laid low for a while. Eventually there were signs of restlessness. When he opened an account in July on the new social networking site, Google+, he identified himself as “a suspected pornography enthusiast and tax evader.”

He tiptoed back onto Twitter, where he has nearly a hundred thousand followers, first with messages about food, his weight, the occasional weird photo. Then on Tuesday he dusted off some of his more familiar tones, remonstrating those who savor the power of the Web without supporting those who are punished for using it. “If you don’t speak for Wang Lihong, and don’t speak for Ran Yunfei, you are not just a person who will not stand out for fairness and justice; you do not have self-respect,”

As the Guardian reported, Wang has been accused of “creating a disturbance” after demonstrating in support of bloggers. Ran, a prominent online presence, was arrested in March and later charged with “inciting subversion of state power”—a severe accusation that can land someone in jail for a decade. (For that reason it was a real surprise when Ran was released Tuesday night and placed under “residential surveillance.”) “It’s not convenient right now to accept interviews,” his wife told the Associated Press, using one of my favorite Chinese expressions; inconvenience, in the very Chinese sense, can be invoked for everything from declining a dinner invitation to declining to risk arrest.

On Twitter, Ai also lamented the police treatment of four friends who were also detained for months in conjunction with his case. Ai described reuniting with his friend Liu Zhenggang: “He talked about the detention for the first time…. This steel-willed man had tears coming down…. He had a sudden heart attack at the detention center and almost died.”

This week, Ai has also given his first post-jail interview, after a fashion. It appears in the Global Times, a state-backed paper which deserves some credit, I suppose, for writing about him—though it is promoting the exclusive without mentioning that they printed some of the most strident denunciations of him when he was detained. The interview ran with a photo of him playing with a shaved cat—which, in his world, can be seen as a sign of things returning to normal—he sounded, at times, quite familiar: “I’ve been drawn into the vortex of politics,” Ai told the Global Times. “I will never avoid politics, none of us can. We live in a politicized society…. You give up your rights when you dodge them. Of course you might live an easier life if you abandon some rights. But there are so many injustices, and limited educational resources. They all diminish happiness. I will never stop fighting injustice.”

The piece is worth reading, if odd. The Global Times, not surprisingly, saw the need to balance Ai’s comments with a healthy dollop of context, for which it turned to Xiong Qiuhong, whom it quotes providing a colorful explanation for the strange intersection between dissent and crime. Rather than paraphrase, I’ll let Xiong have the last words:

Xiong Qiuhong, the director of the Institute of the Criminal Action Law at the CASS said that it is common for Chinese artists to intentionally or unintentionally evade taxes.

“Many famous artists have been caught and punished for evading taxes. Ai’s case is not the only one,” Xiong said.

Xiong wants the local authorities to try Ai in a public trial on tax evasion. “In this way, we can prevent Westerners from politicizing the case,” Xiong said.

Xiong also warned, “if you are a dissident, you should keep your ass clean and not get involved in any crime, so that local governments cannot find you guilty.”

Banner in support of Ai Weiwei at the Lisson Gallery, London. Photograph by falling_angel, Flickr CC.