
Ai Wei Wei's Beijing Studio Destroyed by Chinese Authorities - gscott
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/04/635654200/ai-wei-weis-beijing-studio-destroyed-by-chinese-authorities
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dosy
I think there's a healthy symbiosis between light "state harassment" of Ai and
Ai's notoriety as a dissident.

Ai has been told by the security service that his existence is very important
to the state. I think this is because his existence / story demonstrates two
things: the state does express its disagreement and can detain / punish, the
state allows provides an environment open to criticism and does allow people
to express themselves.

Ai is high profile and so the allowance of continued activity of a high
profile dissident by a state which is in many cases criticized as getting rid
of critics is an important counter narrative that the state wants, I believe.

But I think it's more than that also. Ai is very Chinese and represents
something very Chinese: a native cultural ideal, a person who is globally
recognized as excelling in his field. His work is not just critical of his
homeland, it comments on control in many places.

So I think Ai's case, on the whole, functions more as positive rather than
negative propaganda for China.

One further and more controversial point I'll make is that Ai is in the same
business as Chinese PR, shaping / playing with perceptions. I think Ai has
realized for a long time that art coupled with subtly sensational criticism of
his homeland gets him more traction in the global art scene, than just art.
This is another aspect to the symbiosis. Ai's criticism of China, permitted by
China, also gives China a larger profile in the cultural world through Ai. I
admire the cleverness of these instances where the Chinese use Western
cultural biases against us cleverly for their own benefit. Meaning that often
in the West people are looking to fill in a narrative about the Chinese state
being bad, and Ai, by supplying that demand in a satisfying way for us,
enhances his career, and actually, I believe, subtly promotes / enhances
China's image, using the very narrative demand the West has against the West's
intention with it. In other words, the West, by elevating Ai, also elevates
China, probably against their intent to do so, and precisely because, I
believe, China knows how the play the demand for narrative bias to its
advantage.

But even if people in Western civil society organizations understand this,
what choice do they have? They want to promote a certain set of values, so
they have to use Ai as a persona. So Ai's existence is probably a win-win for
all, rather than just the seeming clear win for the anti-China camp that his
dissident status on the surface suggests.

There's probably instances of the West using this kind of "appetite for bias"
to its own advantage as well but I have not reflected as much about it.

~~~
gcb0
so true. there are people prosecuted there in much worse ways, but in the
international press we only hear about Ai or the HK folks with the subversive
bookstore that every already forgot by now.

the folks doing real activism continue to disappear in silence. often drowned
in the religious charlatans noise that I will not even name here.

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shawnz
Misleading, IMO:

> The AFP reports that the rental contract on Ai's studio expired last fall,
> and that Ai had "been expecting to leave the studio soon."

Sure, maybe they wouldn't have abruptly torn it down if he was still in their
favour, but they're also not obligated to let him have that workspace for
free.

~~~
mtalantikite
I’ve had rental contracts expire in NYC and you just pay month to month after
that. I’d be pretty upset if my landlord showed up one day and just bulldozed
the apartment with me still in it.

Maybe he was planning it as a political act, a performance piece of sorts.
Regardless, I still don’t think having an expired lease should be met with a
destroyed workspace.

~~~
oh_sigh
Have you considered the rights of the landlord? From the video, it looks like
a single large "studio"(aka multi-thousand meter-squared building for one
person), and not a multi-tenant dwelling like one might expect in SF, NYC, or
BJ/京.

Imagine the landlord wants to sell the property to a large property developer,
one who may want to place 100+ units on your previously single unit rental. Is
it fair that Ai can just stay there...perpetually - holding up 99 extra units
on the market because he can't be bothered to move out?

~~~
__m
Just a side note: the property doesn’t belong to the landlord, just a 70 years
grant to use the land, which can be revoked (with compensation)

~~~
Macuyiko
For what it's worth, the concept of land ownership is a pretty fluid concept
in all countries. USA for example, has the concept of Eminent domain
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain#United_States)):

> In federal law, Congress may take private property directly (without
> recourse to the courts) by passing an Act transferring title of the subject
> property directly to the government. In such cases, the property owner
> seeking compensation must sue the United States for compensation in the U.S.
> Court of Federal Claims. The legislature may also delegate the power to
> private entities like public utilities or railroads, and even to
> individuals.[8] The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently deferred to the
> right of states to make their own determinations of "public use".

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LiweiZ
Ai always gets attention from inside the country and he has been there for a
long time. Waves of such people left or disappeared in public's view. He's
still there. Someone can stay and do a lot of opposing things and get and be
able to keep constant public attentions is like a miracle. Why he? Why not
others like him? He's like collecting those badges every time the government
did something to him. And he's doing good and better. If you know China and
know what people act like him could have faced, he is such an odd spot. I know
westerners like him, giving him a lot of high quality badges. He has a quite
rooted network to keep him safe and do a lot of fancy things delivered to
public and shows this off. All sides seem to need him.

Sorry for the rant. As a Chinese, I just hate those people with very special
privilege to show off in the name of some symbol impressing outsiders and has
nothing to do with all those truly matter.

~~~
kurthr
From the fine article, he doesn't live in China any more... after they beat
him and locked him away for a year and took away his passport. That's ignoring
the forced confession, and several million in fines. Yeah, I'm sure he got out
because he's rich and famous... and what he did was embarrass an official?

I like China and its people, but this argument doesn't make much sense. It's
the last part (not the middle) that makes it impossible to fix corruption.

~~~
LiweiZ
'ignoring the forced confession'

That's extremely hard for someone to get away with. He can simply ignore it? I
do not follow Ai's news after I did a little research many years ago. He's
famous on HN. So I wanted to find out what this guy did and what his works
were like at that time.

IIRC, he is a son of a ruling party's famous poetist which indicates he has
some strong connections.

Last time I read some news of him was live stream his own life in Beijing's
studio or something like that. Of course, with his experience,
acceptance/approval level in western world and his art skills (he has some
real art work. For me, his work is facing outsider customers, expressing the
customer's view of China in a bit above average customers' way.), he is among
the best options for some field.

I don't understand what you mean by mentioning 'last part (not the middle)'.

~~~
kurthr
Years ago, I'd seen some his art in China and liked it, and I vaguely know
he's an activist, but I don't follow it so I didn't know he had left the
country until I read the article. I don't think anyone would know what had
happened if he wasn't internationally famous.

What I meant (by 'the last part') is that if we excuse the government for
politically motivated force to punish non-violent dissent for any reason, then
we are agreeing with the worst form of corruption. Bribes (and excusing them)
are bad enough, but excusing threats, violence, and property destruction by
the state is worse. How to create a better (more fair) place to live for the
poor and weak with this kind of threat, when even the wealthy, connected, and
famous can't speak up?

When I see this sort of acceptance from my colleagues from Africa, India,
South America it saddens me just as much as it does in China.

~~~
LiweiZ
You can not image how sad I was/am as someone comes out of that system and I
love my nation from the bottom of my heart. I want to see my nation has a bit
more awareness of fairness you mentioned. The part of Ai I criticize is mostly
how he got away from those kind off trouble safely while collecting so many
credits internationally. Sounds strange to outsiders, I know. I just have
deeper understanding of what the consequence for many of his activities
should've if that was someone else. Outsiders don't have knowledge of this. So
as expected, I got many downvotes on this one. Some reporters lost their lives
and were betrayed by their wives since they were the first to report some
food/medicine quality issues affecting a lot of people (in some cases, the
majority victims were very young kids) over the past 2 decades. They did what
actually mattered in a massive scale but were not known to average outsiders.
People like them are not very marketable in the outsider funding market (This
is just a simple and blunt way of describing some fancy and socially high-
profiled things. This can get many downvotes as well.). We know too many
people like them. And Ai became an icon for outsiders in such a way.
Hopefully, my rant can give you more information to know what I feel. There is
nothing people can do. There is no party can/need collect the opposing force
and combine them into something bigger. Cooperating is the way to go or you
are forced to get funding from outsiders to fulfill their own agendas. And
they do not know what Chinese think of. So once they live on outsiders'
funding system. What they delivered associate little to what average Chinese
can echo. Soon they are not relevant any more. It's a different system.

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a-dub
So I guess this is what gentrification looks like in China. Wow.

