The dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is in Brussels. We talked to him about the China of his youth and that of today. “The Chinese leadership is not about ideology, it is a mafia game.”
Ai Weiwei is in Brussels as honorary president of the Millennium Film Festival, where his documentary on the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh was also screened. The largest refugee camp in the world, where almost one million people are crammed together, is a metaphor for the world in which we live.
Why did you focus on this camp? Did it remind you of your own childhood in a Chinese prison camp, surviving in harsh conditions with your father?
“Yes, in my case this was very natural. I grew up in a labor camp, raised by my father. I can hardly describe it. Guard… (shows on his cell phone a picture of a hole he was locked up in, MR). Do you see the black hole there? I spent five years in that hole with my father. It is not the physical conditions but the mental impact that is the hardest. You didn’t even have to be anti-communist or anti-China to be imprisoned. It was enough to be like my father a poet with a different style, aesthetics and assessment to be declared an enemy of this powerful ideology, this sectarian system. So my later activities naturally brought me to the people who are oppressed, such as the Rohingya. Life is not fair to them. There is no compassion or justice for them.
“Even now I am forced to flee and my son is in the same situation. He is only fourteen but had to leave China when he was five because I was afraid he would also be imprisoned. For him, exile is a kind of captivity. Therefore, you may wonder if the world has changed in the 99 years between the birth of my father and my son. Has anything changed in China in a century? Except that the state has become very powerful politically and economically worldwide?
“Just look at Xinjiang province. That’s where I was locked in with my father in the 1960s lie-system (“improvement through forced labor,” a slogan of the Chinese justice system, MR)along with half a million intellectuals. Now it is the Uyghurs who are in detention (in large-scale re-education camps, MR).”
What did your father tell you to go through this kind of ordeal?
“He told me and my mother to think we were born there and accept the situation. It was impossible to imagine that our days would suddenly look different. The change only happened when Chairman Mao was very old and US President Richard Nixon came to China in 1972. Then a miracle happened for us in that black hole. American journalist Edgar Snow asked the White House: Where is Ai Qing? (late Weiwei’s father, MR).”
When you were arrested yourself in 2011, you were held for 81 days. What did you learn then about the current Chinese regime?
“I knew very well what could happen to me, because my father’s generation knew nothing but repression. Many of his contemporaries even committed suicide because their lives became so unbearable. Still, I was surprised why the regime secretly locked me up without informing my mother and without assigning me a lawyer. They first told me it could be a year before I would be formally charged. Then you think: I’m being kidnapped by a powerful state. It surprised me why we can’t even have an open conversation. My attitude is: let’s discuss in public, but that is not possible. What I learned is that the most powerful weapon of an authoritarian state is to be non-transparent. It was a strange game. In that situation you don’t know which cards they have in hand. You can’t play to win.”
China is now being referred to as a totalitarian surveillance state. Can you say that every Chinese household is now locked in a virtual dark hole?
“That is an underestimate. There are no private persons, no private property, no private thoughts in China. There is only one ideology, one direction. Even the top Chinese Communist Party is doing their best to get rid of what they call the “double faces.” They look for people who say they agree with them, but suspect they disagree at heart. When you see this happen, you realize that China is no longer about ideology, but about a mafia game. Everyone distrusts everyone, no one trusts anyone. Anyone can betray you. The normal psychological state is polluted by the state. It resembles the time of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), when children reported their parents and spouses, or students reported their teachers and vice versa. These are tactics that divide the population so that they have no option but to follow the leaders.”
Can you influence a new generation of Chinese artists to create change beneath the surface?
“It would be good to evaluate first why so many Chinese don’t even know I exist! The Chinese regime censors me because they think I am a threat to the establishment.
“I thought the internet would help me make a change in three years. But they don’t even give you three hours, not three minutes. One day in 2009 I received a phone call asking me not to write anything anymore. The moment the phone was hung up, my three blogs disappeared, from different servers. Then I suddenly realized what it means when you no longer exist. You disappear.
“Those of the young generation who still manage to reach me online feel paralyzed in the current system. Yet they often say that I changed their lives, not necessarily because of my deep ideas but because of my attitude, how to survive as an individual in the most difficult time possible.”
You referred to Nixon’s China diplomacy of the 1970s. Can the same relaxation happen again if the US seeks rapprochement?
“Good question. I’m afraid not. Back then, China was as dead as it is today, as North Korea is today. Mao was afraid of the Soviets threatening to use nuclear weapons at the border. Nixon and Mao found each other in a shared enemy. Today the roles have changed. Due to globalization, the US and China are economically intertwined and geopolitical rivals. It is not always clear who is enemy and who is friend, but there is always a need for an enemy image. Whether it was the war on terror, the covid pandemic or the war in Ukraine: the regime managed to strengthen itself with it.”
At The Times did you say that Xi Jinping and Putin are on the same wavelength with the West. The current leadership believes this is an opportunity for China to establish a new world order. What drives them?
“The Chinese leaders think their culture is more civilized than the West and domestic problems are the fault of the former colonial rulers (like the British, MR). Both are not true, but are deeply rooted in the psychology of the Chinese Communist Party. Since globalization, despite their wealth, they also think that they do not get a fair share of the pie, while the US under Donald Trump actually thought the same way.
“China sees this current era as a global game changer. The cards are redistributed in a poker game but we don’t yet know who will be left with the best. Beijing and Moscow collude in an attempt to control the game.”
What can the West do to contain Beijing? Putting economic pressure?
“Many Western governments are now formed by techno-bureaucrats. They think like corporate management, completely different from crazy, authoritarian, nations like China and Russia. The West quickly runs into internal democratic problems when the economy is not doing well. Just look at France. China doesn’t care about that. All they have to do is take care of people without opinions. If it comes to a fight (with West, MR) so China will not be afraid to impoverish. This has not changed since Mao. There was a famine in the 1960s, but he still built his nuclear weapons. The same mentality still prevails today. Chinese leaders are not afraid of losing a few million people.”
So sanctions are pointless?
“No, sanctions only work in the West because people are not willing to make sacrifices. But in China people just start working even more, 7 out of 7, around the clock if they have to.”
What does help? Military competition, with which the US drove the USSR into bankruptcy in the 1980s?
“I don’t think that’s a solution now, because then you will create problems in the future. What’s the point of me cutting your hand if you’re going to cut mine?”
What do you think is the risk that the current zero-sum game between China and the US will lead to war over Taiwan?
“China has nothing to gain from a physical conquest of Taiwan because they are now doing good business with it. In principle, I see China always striving for reunification. I don’t think the West or the US (in case of conflict, MR) could do more for Taiwan than for Ukraine now. Ukraine is still a frontline state for NATO, Taiwan is just too far for them.”
In addition to Ukraine, do you think the West applies a double standard towards refugees from other conflicts, such as the Rohingya or the asylum seekers in Brussels?
“I think that is too kindly expressed. There are simply no standards for most refugees. It is sad that the West does not protect the most fragile foundations it has, because this is about human rights, humanity and freedom of opinion. When we look at the treatment of refugees in the EU and the US, it becomes more difficult for them to rebuke China and Russia. They show the same attitude because of their failure in that area. It even goes beyond refugees alone. Just look at how much money the Western arms industry has made in all kinds of overseas conflicts.”
The www.festivalmillenium.org runs until April 6. Johan F. Hel Guedj of L’Echo also contributed to this interview.
BIO
Born August 28, 1957, Beijing. Spent part of his childhood in a labor camp with his father, the poet Ai Qing.
Weiwei has emerged as China’s most versatile contemporary artist. He designed, among other things, the Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium and makes contemporary sculptures or recreations, such as Monets recently Water lilies in Lego blocks.
Director of award-winning documentaries, including about refugees, such as now Rohingya.
Human rights activist. He has been living in exile in Europe since 2015, mainly in Portugal.
His impressive autobiography was published in 2021 A thousand years of joy and sorrow.