On the morning of April 3rd, 2011,
the renowned artist Ai Weiwei was
picked up by Chinese police at an
airport in Beijing.
Later that day, he found himself in
the back of a van surrounded by
security officials and wearing a
black hood.
They took him to a secret detention
facility where he was interrogated
and monitored.
It was here that I began to think of
his young son, wondering when he
would see him again.
I was thinking, I'll be in that
position for the next
10 or certain years.
That's what they told me.
The memory it only belongs
to isolated
the men.
And I tried to
capture what happened
in the past.
And I realize if
there's a chance, I will write
that down so
I can pass to my son, and
at that time he was two years old,
so he would have a full record.
After 81 days and following an
international outcry, Ai was
released by Chinese authorities, but
he was far from free.
They held onto his passport so he
couldn't leave the country, and they
continue to watch his every move.
It was then that he began to write.
The resulting book "One
Thousand Years of Joys and Sorrows"
tells the story of his detention,
his repeated struggles with the
communist government, and how what
happened to his father, the famed
poet Ai Quing during China's
Cultural Revolution, shaped
his worldview.
Why art is necessary
and important.
Why a freedom of speech are
necessary.
So all those issues are not
just come to me, but rather
come from my father's
generation.
He was heavily punished
with about half million
of the intellectuals
and the mayor, and the first
generation is sent to the
reeducation camp,
then relocated us from
the Capitol to
the most remote province,
Shinto.
And that experience
gave me early.
Very intimate
relations to politics.
Growing up in exile and watching
his father struggle profoundly
affected his views on human rights,
individuality and freedom of
expression.
And he would later explore these
themes in his art.
In 2005, I turned his fingers
from the camera lens to the computer
keyboard and typed his first blog
post, a move that had
profound implications for his
career.
At that moment, neither I nor
China's internet censorship
apparatus anticipated quite
what a transformational act this
would turn out to be for me, he
writes.
I entered the public's field of
vision with the force of a bullet
from a gun.
If you have art exhibition, you
may have one maybe 100,000
people went to those exhibitions.
But if you put a social media
post immediately
can be saying a
hundred thousand people
a day, as you know,
it's it's very
convenient.
I also felt liberated.
Every character that I tapped on my
keyboard was emblematic of a new
kind of freedom, he writes.
By enabling alternative voices,
the internet weakened the power of
autocracy, dispelling the obstacles
it tried to put in the individual's
way.
I harness the power of the internet
to push for government transparency.
Broadcast is anti-authoritarian
views and advocate for change
in China and abroad.
Eventually, government censors shut
him down.
His blog, along with thousands of
his photographs, disappeared
even in online search within China
for his name, drew a blank.
Which foreshadowed his own
disappearance a few years later.
These Olympics, as you know, are a
hugely controversial why
China's been widely criticized for
human rights abuses, including the
mistreatment of pro-democracy
activists and ethnic minorities.
As the world watches the Beijing
Olympics, American politicians have
become more vocal in their criticism
of China's record on human rights.
Ai says these gestures will have
little impact
When West talk about transparency
and human rights, and
the China is not going to listen to
it because in the West,
you cannot even defended
the value of human rights.
If you talk of a United States,
you have so many black people
in jail.
I mean, you can't has the biggest
population in jail
within the world, and the U.S.
supports so many,
you know, bad society
cells and arms and
do all kind of dirty works.
How can you talk about
human rights under transparency
while you hold Julian Assange, a
journalist could be
facing 175 years
in jail?
How can talk about price freedom?
So this kind of argument,
you know, it's not going to work.
I sees the struggle between China
and America continuing and remains
deeply troubled by the direction of
both countries.
He recently drew headlines for
comparing the state of free speech
in America to the Cultural
Revolution.
In many ways, you already
in the authoritarian state.
You just don't know it.
How so?
Many sins happens today in
US is can
be compared.
Cultural Revolution in China.
Like what?
Like people trying to
be unified
in a certain political correctness
that is very dangerous.
These thoughts are echoed in his
memoirs.
"Ideological cleansing," he writes,
"exists not only under totalitarian
regimes.
It is also present in a different
form in liberal western democracies.
Under the influence of politically
correct extremism.
Individual thought and expression
are too often curbed and too often
replaced by empty political slogans.
It is not hard to find examples
today of people saying and doing
things they don't believe in, simply
to fall in line with the prevailing
narrative and make a superficial
public statement."
Tellingly, though, Ai Weiwei's book
is readily available in liberal
Western democracies, where it's
received widespread acclaim
in China, it's censored.