Geopolitics and Future of China

Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. Sign up to The Rest Is Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to the rest ispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics. com. Welcome to the rest of politics leading with me Rory Stewart and with me Alasta Campbell and we're very pleased to have Ai Wei Wei. He's an artist, an activist, a prolific writer and filmmaker, and an important voice in some of the most complex and important debates of our time. The rise of China, its role in the world, corruption in public life, attitudes to refugees, a big theme, and also censorship and free speech, and indeed whether we even have free speech, including in the West. He's sixty-eight. He's the son of a poet who was imprisoned, tortured, and exiled in nineteen fifties China, which made for a pretty extraordinary childhood for him. And he himself has known what it's like to be on the receiving end of harsh treatment from the authorities and has therefore spent much of his life in the US and Europe of which he's also got considerable criticism. Recently returned to China after around a decade away to visit his elderly mother with his son, and it will be fascinating to hear his views on China today as opposed to China when he was growing up there as a child. So I Wei Wei, thank you for being here. It's so nice to be your studio. Can we begin a little bit with your childhood and your father? Who was your father and what was your experience when you were a child with your father? My father was born nineteen ten, which is uh ten years after eight nations invaded China, which of course, you know which eight nations England, Fren ch, Italy, Germany, Russian, Japan ese, and Austria. They forced China to open up its market . But the effort started from eighteen forty, the first opium war and the second opium war. So English have three tim es invade China, force China to open up. So this is a very interesting moment. Your head of state still in China. And this time much friendly. Our head of state is the king, head of government. The head of government, prime minister is there, you're absolutely right. And uh to answer my father, he was born ten years later, uh 1910, as growing up as a poet and studied in Paris, and right after he went back in his early twenties, he'd been sentenced for six years for some kind of separation of state power. That state was a nationalist power, Gomingang. So after years of some kind of refugee because the Japanese invade China and have a such a strong impact in China, so he has to run in trying to find a place to be teacher or editor, you know, for for literary man, that's only job probably at that time, but he could never really reach that point. He he join ed the revolution communist in Yan, which is uh how to say cradle for communist, and later established New China, then he was in the very high position, probably highest position in literature, and the most renowned poet as patriotic anti mostly colonial and imperialism, then being criticized as a writist. So the year nineteen fifty seven when he was exiled, I was born. That's a short story. You were born same year as me, ninete en19 fift5y7, and you were one when he was essentially banished from Beijing. He is completely disappeared, been sent to re most remote area. That area is uh in the ancient So I think it's not bad policy. Then kill them. And and just about so he was sent to Xinjiang. Sinjiang. And then you then had to travel with him in the back of a truck to what was basically an army camp where he was given the job of cussing trimming trees, but he also had to appear in public every day where he was attacked for being a rightist. He had to appear in this very remote poor village but it's kinda uh semi uh military type. That means if Russian invites us the time Russian is number one enemy because it's getting so close and uh and they have a huge amount of of uh soldiers restored next to the border of China. So every day we are preparing to defend ourselves from Russian. We even learned a few Russian words to say raise your hands. Well not kill you if you you know just just uh raise your hand. So all those Russian language. It doesn't sound true, but uh we have to live in the village, my father have to confess his so-called crime in front of those never uneducated farm ers This episode is brought to you by IG. If you're listening to Leading, the chances are that you're someone who thinks seriously about politics, about economics, and your own financial future. So here's something genuinely worth knowing. 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In politics, data plays a massive and increasingly To get stuff together on special educational needs, or whether you're trying to make a new decision on a business, you're endlessly trying to generate reports, presentations, summaries, insights, and what this does, the Adobe Acrobat Studio is it's a PDF space and it's AI powered and it turns those documents into summaries and insights. Doing the stuff which is actually the kind of backbone of what a consultant does or a civil servant does with a lot of their time. It helps you manage documents and transform insights into standout content so you can go from idea to creation in record time or within an AI-powered workflow. So whatever you want to do, you can do that with Acrobat. Learn more and try it out on Adobe.com. Now all the traitors present? Let's get started, shall we? From rags to riches. I'm so sick of this. Working like a dog and being treated worse. Yorkshire to New York. Proclaimers, you and me. A life dedicated to revenge. Let's make this an occasion to remember. A woman of substance on Channel 4. Stream now. What did they see as his crime? What was his crime? He doesn't really know he has any crime, but he have to say he's anti-revolutionary and most people think he's a no-boist because people doesn't even know how a poet can commit a crime. So yeah, it's just uh everything is so blind and of course this is basically a human condition at that time. And how did that you growing up with that? So seeing your father being punished, being humiliated, and you were alongside him, what what did that develop in you? What developed in me is to say how mass can be easily so down and so have no no possibility to searching for any truth. That built on me from very early age. You can say everyone is blind, everyone act stupidly, and uh everyone thinks they are right. So And how kind were people to your father? Were some people very kind and generous to him? Did people every day some people say I'm sorry for you, or were they afraid to say that? To understand him, you really have to read his poetry, which I cannot read because I that time he all the books are being destroyed. But for my daily sense about him, he's an honest man. He he's very naive type. He can be happy any moment and he is not someone complaining all the time. Even he does the most difficult job. He would tell me, you' see, Im sixty years old. I'd never know even who cleaned my toilet before. Now I clean for them. What's so w you know, nothing wrong with it. And he told my I tell my mom, of course my mom used to live in very high position with him, to say we have just to think we were born here. So I think he's a man with a big heart and a very And what made you become an artist? What what had happened in your life that well that led to that? I still question you am I uh artist? Yeah. Uh or you know, people put a lot of name on me, artist or activist. You both also I don't know what's the difference between artist and activist. But anyhow I survived by doing my work now. And uh it's not uh such a good prop uh profession. I would not encourage anybody to do that. You know what happened to me is uh purely chance a miracle. I cannot repeat it because the time, because my history, my position, and uh because my I don't know because what? Because all mistakes I made. I become a so-called artist. Just to get from when you were a young boy, age ten, to when you were maybe twenty-f ive. What happened between the labor camp in Sinjiang to to you as a young man? What happened in that period? That period time basically there's uh time for huge political change. First, Ni xon came to Ch ina and uh then everybody shocked because Nixon is our top enemy suddenly appeared in Beijing. You know, Chemu happily received him. Then you realize, oh my God, what have been building our mind is all can be changed just within one second. Just to general that's the country would have seen Nixon as an enemy. Oh yeah. Yeah, this capitalism is an enemy not only for this country, for you know, we learned from Karl Marx about capitals, we learned from uh Vladimir Ili Chilining,, you you know or the know the imperialism is the end of capitalism. You know, I I read those books. I read the Communist Manifesto when was ten. So how this could be this paper tagger United States, which Chem called United States just a paper tagger really come to China and shake hands and hugs with top leaders, drink motai and uh they are so happily together. Seems they are seems like they're families. So that is uh my first education about international politics. What age were you then? Nineteen seventy two. So you're a fi teenager, you're fifteen. Yeah. So that that felt like a big moment in the country. That was a big moment. Actually one incident happened is uh nineteen seventy one when Chairman Mao have official Hodisi someone would uh become uh a person at his position as Limbyok, which is the highest top military leader, his airplane dropped in Mongolia when he tried to escape. Then that is about the internal politics. How can Communist Party, the second person, just trying to esc ape? Then the next year, you know, Nixon comes. That is changed or it's such a very wild education beyond any dream can happen that time. And by 76 Ma death last same year, strange, three top leaders all that same year, Joan Lai and Drew Du. And that time I was swimming in uh in uh in a park and I heard the the sound of you know the the radio. That time is no television. So that means uh the sky collapsed for Chinese this this is uh like a holy person suddenly disappeared. So there's a few years of uh vacancy there. Nobody knows what to do. And uh of course Deng Xiaoping follows come up. Basically Deng Xiaoping comes as some kind of military cope because they size the who's supposed to be in the government, you know, mouse, wife and the other group, cut a four four of the gang of four. Yeah, yeah, gang of Four. So you know. But everybody's happy because that really announced the chairman's time is over. But what is going to come, nobody know. So by that period of time I got into Beijing Film Uh Institute, the first art college after closing during the Cultural Revolution opened. So I got into the school and study uh how do you call cartoon design. The time the only cartoon we can see is uh Tom and Jerry, which I still love today. And uh then I definitely think I have to escape because there's many details I will not mention. So I don't trust the new established uh uh government. So the only place I would like to go is New York, because that's the heart of our enemy used to be. So I like to be there. Then to by twenty-four I went to United States. And what was your assessment at the time, or maybe a little bit later when you're a f an adult into your twenties, what was your assessment of Mao? Uh chairman Mao or Mao Mao Zedong is a very special person, I would say. You only can put put the person in the historical context. Nobody can judge anybody without this kind of historical contact. like the room like this all full of the old uh documents. He just loved read it reading his mind is uh crazy he's a poet. He's very good uh strategical leader and uh he knows how to play uh political game and he's also very subversive. He can use the public opinion to destroy the whole system, you know, system he established. So he destroyed the the whole system trying to maintain his power under control. So it sounds like he had a lot of respect. Oh he has a high respect uh in in China and from you? Uh half and a half. I have a respect for uh for his wisdom in in the struggle for Chinese uh uh early uh struggle because that time he has to fight not Japanese but uh really nationalist and uh those have uh Americans supported army and you know, he only have very, very little chance with 40,000 people in poorest area, which include my father there. And uh they they have a great patience, they wait the moment to come, then you know they, got the chance. So it's very w wisdom. But he's very crude person too. Cruel. Uh yeah, crude person, because under his control, about half a million of intellectual being purged. Of course, he doesn't kill anybody. He just lets them to go to so-called a re-education camp. One of the things that's so difficult to understand about China is that you go from thousands of years of this very, very deep culture civilization, and then you hit the cultural revolution and everything seems to be bro ken. There's this break from the deep past to the present. What is this about? Can you how do you think about the culture revolution? Thank you. It's a good question. But we have to start a little bit earlier than Culture Revolution. First by two thousand twenty one China have accepted uh the idea of uh Russian communist. Yeah they had a first uh meeting on a boat uh about 13 people. Someone said it's only 11, but it's never really clear. Under the date, it's not clear to establish a Chinese Communist Party. And there's a two-person on that group, one is from Russia, with uh Lenin's uh how do you say it's like a Russian delegation, just one person, and another I think is from a Dutch. So from the very beginning, Chinese Communist Party is really helped by foreign forces, which you know the government every day now is so careful about foreign forces, anti China forces, but they are the typical foreign anti-China that time the establishment. And the first document for Communist Party, you know you have to write down the party's delegation, is on Russian because they don't have type rather for Chinese. It's long before the that established. Can you believe the Communist Party first document is in Russian? And the page eleven is missing. Nobody knows where's the page eleven. You know all those details are so funny. And uh by then China just uh overthrew the the Qing dynasty, the Federalist control for thousands of years and trying to find a new way. Why they have to do it because nineteen hundreds realize the West of very extendedly uh developed with their boat and their cannon and the China just think still use use knives trying to prep protect themselves. So they think the weakness of China is because the Qing Dynasty is uh incapable to dealing with industrial uh state. So by that time all the intellectuals had uh two ideas, uh one one idea, two concepts called China have to be reborn and uh to establish Mr. Du and Mr. S that means uh democracy and the science. So that's the first uh goal. All the intellectuals trying to establish China with this uh democracy and science till today they they cannot uh establish that. But uh that's early uh principle and ideology. But by that's we call it the uh May Fourth Movement, but two communist s established in 1949, that's the first time they destroyed the foundation of the uh old China because they killed all the landlord. Landlord in China is only educated people and they carries the fundamental values and all the culture and heritages only because landlord, farmers are educated. They kill all the landlord Trying to please a farmer to establish this Russian type of not Russian but a uh how do you say Soviet type of uh uh establishment. Your father's father was a a small landlord. Oh, a small landlord. So he understood calligraphy, paintings, books. Tell us a little bit about that culture which vanished. Well, landlord in that time uh not just someone uh trying to you know get money or or land but rather a very educated class. They all uh learn calligraphy, writing poems, uh build a nice uh houses and uh you know not church but chinese uh you know to to to help the whole society to worship the what happens in the past. So when that had completely destroyed, then the next thing is so called uh anti-rightist movement which vanished the the the children or related uh intellectuals to the old past, uh about a half million of them. Disappeared. Yeah, they all like my father sent to exile. Then the next thing is cultural revolution. That is a movement use their words, it touches every soul of every individual. Everyone is involved. There's no one uh exception. So children in school they have to, you know, remember Chemmao's sentence or you know, all very political. So it comes to extreme uh uh cleanup of the society with high political uh propaganda. You mentioned that you went to the United States and then but when you when you went back to China, although as you say you're defined as an artist, it was actually am I right that it was your writing as much as anything that drew you to the attention of the authorities and that then started to harass and become the victim of violence and and and also at one point become arrested for what was presumably a kind of invented invented crime. Can you just talk talk me through what that was like? You're talking about thirty years of history. I went to United States first when I was 24. And I studied in New York for a short time. And let me make it short, I was very poor. I was a foreigner. I don't speak a words of English. And the first uh words I learned is excuse me. I think that is so difficult for me to see excuse me. But uh my my girlfriend said you have to see this if you you know, in supermarket pulling a car somewhere. Then I don't feel very comfortable in the United States. Uh you know, it's so much free and nobody can really tell me what to do, but that also pretty bad because you don't know what to do. For me, I really understand this this so-called freed om. It's not exactly freedom. You have to really establish yourself and meet this kind of per personal competition and challenge and become successful or establish something so called to secure yourself. I don't I don't like that that much, you know, because like too much effort you will put in. And I know I will never become a so-called successful artist. It's only fifty in the whole United States and the rest is just endless struggle or disappear somehow. So by nineteen ninety-three I found the excuse to go back because my father was terribly ill under twelve years I haven't seen him and was promising never go back. But I broke I break my words. I said ah this is the last chance I've excuse to go back. So I moved back to China . So then I have nothing to do. My father told me, hey, your this is your home. You don't have to act like a guest. You should do whatever you want to do. And uh I still cannot adjust myself. I still become a guest of my country because the country I never have any nostalgia feeling about it. All I have is uh you know bad feel ings. And then China has already moved forward to become a much progressive society under Deng Xiaoping's slogan let's become rich first. That's all his idea. The idea affects China till now. So it's very simple, very practical man, Deng Xiaoping and smart, play poker game all the time, and that's the interesting part about him. He likes to play poker game. You're a blackjack, go ahead. I also play poker game. And uh I like card game, you know, so then I have nothing to do uh till my mom said you know, you Saints never went to United States. You know, what have you learned? I I I have no idea. You have no American passport, you never get a university degree, you don't even know how to drive a car, you know, you're never married. What's wrong with you? Please move out. Because I I play poker with my brother all the time. She hated. She thinks this boy is just complete a waste. Just for a second on this, please. What did you do for twelve years in America? What is the answer to your mother? What did you do during that time? You didn't you didn't get a degree, you didn't drive a car? What were you doing? I was hanging on street in Laurie's side, you know, with all the Tomless drug dealers and the you know, it's kinda dangerous, uh dark area in not like today it's very fashionable. I live on you know third street, uh between Avenue A and B. If people ask me where you leave, I tell them my address, they suddenly become a salon . They will not ask another question. So which makes me very satisfied. But how did you live? You have to make money. Um I I did everything uh you can imagine. I was babysitter, I was fixing uh fixing antique furniture, so house painting or construction work, I worked at printing factory, I worked in framing shops, also I played blackjack in in Taj Mahal of Trump's casino. I give finger to that too at the time. And uh yeah, I do everything. And I was uh street uh do street uh poetries. So let's go forward then to when you suddenly become a target of the authorities. I just want to know what my experience. I will never become like that. It's first there's uh I built my own studio after my mom kicked me out. I have to find a place to live. I don't want to live in an apartment. Uh uh since I come back from New York. I have a dream to build my studio. I want to a village. They said, Oh yeah, you can rent the land because the land grow vegetables can never make as much money as renting. So I said yeah, that makes sense, you know. So that I didn't think if I rent the land, what those farmers will do? So that's just the same question, if AI happens, or what all those people will do. So yeah, I built my studio. Suddenly that studio become uh some kind of landmark in China because nobody built studio like that. Nobody even knows what the studio looked like and all the architecture magazine internationally reported. I become a spokesperson with new idea and a new style and new society. So they invited me to be on internet. I said no no no I don't touch computer. I don't know how to type Chinese words, even they say with your you're so smart you can learn quickly. They're right. I quickly learned it. The first sentence I put on there is to pre express yourself need a reason, but to express yourself is the reason. That takes me two days to think of what will be first words I put on internet, but that's a good starting point.. Yeah After that, every day I would write three, four articles, openly discuss anything. Nobody wants to even discuss. So I just open the news paper, see some topic, give some my you know opinion till one day I started to investigate uh Sutra earthquake uh the disappearance of the five thousand three hundred thirty five children. And before that I was involved in design of uh Olympic Stadium for 2008. So all those built me up in a very high holiday cause kind of profile because a lot of young people think this guy talked something nobody ever would openly talk and he's so guts. At the same time his design is the most uh you know, Glimmer's uh stadium. For international listeners, so the Sichuan earthquake happens, all these people are killed and some children disappear. Can you explain a little bit about it yes, the Sichuan earthquake happened in uh to uh May twelfth in uh Vintra area in Sichuan during that time it just maybe a few minutes of shaking that's about A level of earthquake killed about uh seventy to eighty thousand people. And of course everybody's sad but same time they all blame this is a n a natural disaster. What are you going to do about it? But I realize uh you know many buildings around school are not even collapsed. But those school collapsed. Five thousand more people, students disappeared, but government never answered me. I made a hundred phone calls to ask this. They said, no, no, no, you you this is a national secret. And why you have to know it? And are you an American spy or something? I said, what are you talking about? Also online because I'm very active announced. I will personally find those names. And you did eventually. I did. I did um it's a miracle. We did it. We located five thousand two hundred and nineteen students, name birthday, which school and their family. I daily I post this online. That generates so much attention because the government is so shy to see every day this guy put one to one hundred names there newly found and the government local government is shaking because this guy is uh ruthless and they don't know how to stop me till one day they shut off my internet. It's really interesting that the Citron earthquake seems to have and the consequence for these children seems to have radicalized you in a way that was that still to this day a, lot of your art seems to be about that. Why was that such a thing? Unfortunately, we have happiness and we have sadness as both uh human emotions. And uh I'm leaving a period of time and location. I see those tragic sadness related to individuals very often being not to talk about. So as artists I or not artists, as a human being, I would think I have to protect my integrity of, you know a fellow human being being hurt, I have to really pronounce it and let people know what I feel about it. So that really to social justice. And uh for me, it's really for mys elf. I have to do it. And I I I don't have a choice. Do you define that as the artistic impulse? Later, because people keep asking me your artists like the my interrogator during my uh detention they said away. Your artist. And why you're doing the work lawyers should do or journalists should do and you're even doing better than them. I said maybe I'm not art ist. So that's that's I think the people's idea about who is artist and how artist should uh perform which uh doesn't really fit me. Okay i wai way Rory quick break and then back for more. This episode is brought to you by Free Trade, the award-winning free investment platform. And I guess it's about transparency, which is the kind of great buzzword in politics, but essentially seeing what's actually happening, taxes, pensions, markets run all the stuff that's kind of hidden away. And investing can feel exactly the same. People put their money away each month only for fees to chip away at it. And and this can be an amazing thing. I mean you you invest every month and you end up paying all these commissions and fees. And actually, some people find I found this myself that almost however much money your investments make in the market, all the money you make disappears in the commissions and fees. And free trade is built to challenge that assumption. You can invest in stocks and funds without paying commission with free ICEs and free pensions, all in one app and web platform. Go to freetrade.io slash trip to start investing for free and while you're there, take a look at free trade's latest cash back offers. Value of your investments can, as I've often experienced, go down as well as up, and you may get back less than you invest. Other charges may apply. ICER and SIP rules and terms and conditions, of course also apply. Hey this is Michael and Hannah from Goalhangers. The rest is science. 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Springs blooming at Starbucks. A new season calls for new discoveries, like our iced uber vanilla matchelate. Smooth, creamy, and nutty, balanced with notes of vanilla. It's a treat for the eyes too, with vibrant lilac hues to brighten your spring mood. Hot or iced, there are so many ways to love this stunning serve. Uber vanilla. Pouring now at Starbucks. Subject to availability while stocks last. Tell us a little bit about the detention. What happened? You only have one hour, right? And man always have a perspective of time and space. Detention simply it should come to me because I've been too wild. And with my ideology of what I'm writing, I can be easily be punished as death sentence during cultural rule revolution hundred times, according that's quote of their words is the way you did you can be really killed hundred times, if just ten, twenty years earlier. Yes, I I detention comes to me which I can predict, but at the same time, I kinda fe el uh satisfied because I always jealous my father, he was sentenced for six years in his twenties. I think anybody in fighting for aesthetic or ideology being sentenced early is really uh something can be proud of. So I think I never reached that point. I think uh 80 years later, I cannot predict I will be kidnapped by state and put in this secret detention for 81 days. So the story is uh pr etty uh simple. They just want to I think mainly scar me. Were you scared? I'm not scared, but uh I'm uh you know I I thought it was some kind of black humor because why you have to put a black hole for me and send me to a some unknown location and not to let me get in touch with my family and give me like a very intensive interrogation, ask all kind of funny questions. I'm not scared, but I feel sorry for my son. He's only two years old. So I feel one interrogator tells me well when you f your serve your sentence could be ten to thirteen years. When you come out, your son will never recognize you. That even may not be true but it's scary to me. I I feel deeply sorry I did something which very irresponsible to someone else. That time your passport is taken off you. Eventually you get your passport back and you you start to travel again. And what I've been really interested in, you've got a book out at the moment on censorship. And I said in the in the introduction, I get the sense that you think we in the West sit here and we we look at China and we think this is a repressive country, they have no free speech, they don't believe in human rights. But your experience of the West seems to have led you to conclude that actually there's not that much difference. I'm really interested in how you how you make that argument. Well it started early um US invades the uh Iraq. That time I was in New York, I was in part of this anti-war uh coverage. I take my photos and you know the demonstration. I realized the one demonstrate I have less people than the police. Police uh on the two sides of the street, for the bypass you cannot even see demonstrators, you only see police there. So you can see this is typical police state. You would allow people to demonstrate, but their voice can never be really covered or even those act up, you know those uh gay spray uh demonstration can never be heard. They have to find a strategy to run it on highway to stop the highway then journalists would report the incident. So this is very established uh capitalism society, media and the the education and the is all being controlled so well and uh to tell you what is wrong what is right and uh which is not so different from the Chinese uh society except it seems yes, you can have some voice, but your voice can never really be heard. There's a very interesting moment with Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he moves from Russia to America. He criticized America. He had been a dissident criticizing the Soviet Union. And then in a favourite speech he criticized America. But it's very difficult to hear because we want to say, come on, these two things are not the same. You know, nobody detained you for eighty-one da ys in America, nobody put your father in exile though. You know how long Julian Sanji has been in British jail? I visit the jail, I visit court, I visit the embassy when he was hiding. I know exactly the whole case. He was pulled out by British agent from the embassy. That is already pretty strange image. Everybody will remember he was carried out . Then he was being put in there with all those highway public pressure, he can end up his life in there. So then now you ask what kind of crime he really made, you know, so called uh this uh WikiLeaks platform today everybody has a you know it's not uh that he just lived early trying to expose. But without that even the file relate to this uh this island. Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, come on. We all know what's going on. But the the file is still not open. You know, the only possibility like weak leaks can open it. That guy even can commit suicide in jail. Can believe it? And they said the the camera is not working. Come on, we have six, eight cameras here. It it must be strange for you because the West saw you as a Chinese dissident. They liked you criticizing China. Now you criticize the West, so it they must get surprised or uncomfortable. True, she is so uncomfortable after yeah even yesterday I I criticized the you know I said something the West have no moral position even to post fingers to China because just just look at the mirror what you did in past years, you know, in related to all the intern ational events, in related to Israel, Gaza events, in related to in almost every aspect. What But if something like if somebody like Julian Assange had done the equivalent in China, there is a fair chance he would be dead by now. And where are Uyghurs? What w what what would you say was the West's Uyghurs? Would you say that's the Palestinians? I think the West about Uyghurs also is a problem. Because um because uh you clearly put the concentration camps, you know, the to use a name we know conceptually use certain names which has to clearly talk about something else. Then the Uyghur has been re educated in in some areas, but not start with Uyghurs, for me, my father, as a Han Dynasty, or not Han race people. We come much earlier than Uyghurs being re-educated in 1957. So that's the West the concept about that is really not respectful because you're choosing topics rather than giving a even hands about the situation. That means you're you you don't have integrity in what you're talking about. That's why I keep uh criticized the But the Uyghurs the Uyghurs themselves, we've talked to the Uyghurs who are based in London. They talk about concentration camps. They say that's the reality of the life of the people that they've left behind. But you cannot talk about Uyghurs, not talk about Gaza. Gaza has been longest uh prison for decades. It's more than equivalent. It's much harsh situation in Gaza. You know what happens, all the women's and children being killed. We were not being killed in d this kind of education. They in Chinese world they are being trained with some skills, with some procaganda education. You know, for them is what they did to me. Uh so are you now in China more? Are you spending more time in China now? No, I only in 10 years I spent 21 days there. But you left Germany and then you were in Britain a bit and then in Portugal a bit. I mean give me a sense of these different countries. I I spent the six years in Germany only my son studies there. Uhhuh. So daily I six o'clock uh, I sent him to school, three o'clock, I take him back. That's father's uh responsibility. He already totally forgot about that part. Now he's in Britain and uh you know he's such a wedge well educated gentleman, seventeen years old, and he refused to talk to me anymore. You know, all the king ages. You don't mean literally. Huh? You don't mean he literally refuses to talk to you. Oh, yes, literally. Why? You know. Well I I think many parents would answer your question. They they call it uh some kind of teenage uh rebellion. Oh yeah, but I never even heard about that before. You can be rebellion but not in this kind of completely sense. But I I feel happy, proud about him. I said yes, you can go as far as you can. That means uh that's what I want. I don't want you just trying to pay some kind of fake respect to me. But just go as far as you can, you know. But you'd be very unhappy if you never spoke to you again. Not true. I think he he loves me, I love him. You know, this is blood situation. But he doesn't speak to me. I haven't speaked to my father for twelve years when I was in the United States. I haven't much spoken to my mom for n previous ten years, but still they're my family. Where do you think Chinese culture is going in the next ten, twenty years? Do you think people will begin to rediscover the past? They will show more respect for traditional classical culture or is that fading? What's happening with the China has uh a lot of things to do to fill up the gap between two thousand uh nineteen hundred to this hundred and twenty years and they have been in such up and down tremendous uh unsinkable ideology switch from federalism or communist, then uh become a post state you cannot call it communist but you cannot call it capitalism. So it's really a new a new society. So they have a lot to learn and they have a lot to catch up. Can I just go back to the the parallels between West and East? Um on freedom of speech. As you said, Keir Starmer, our Prime Minister in China, and anybody in Britain can go out and can protest against him visiting, they can say that it's the wrong thing to do, indeed many politicians have said that it's the wrong thing to do, and he can defend himself against that criticism. Whereas you couldn't make the same case against let's say that the Cambridge gave a talk. This one Western boy threw the a shoe to him, if you still remember that incident. Of course that is quite shocking for Chinese insult a public uh official but through a shoes to a uh uh you know um a state leader it's not start from that boy but uh a journalist through the shoes to uh Bush when he gave a talk. Yeah. And that journalist uh was being put in jail for years. You know that. So let's check on the facts. So I'm a good journalist. I I try to make myself balanced view. And uh you know, if you check on the British record, there's over 1,200 people being put in jail over so called hate speech in just recent uh study. You're sounding like Elon Musk now. Elon Musk? Well I don't sound like anybody. I just based on facts. There is one thousand two hundred people in jail because based on the so called hate speech. But do you think there is such a thing as hate speech? Well, that's a very vague uh words. I think his speech should be the same crime as love speech philosophically. What do you make of Donald Trump historically, culturally? What do you think of Donald Trump? What does he recognize? I think it's a truly a phenomenon, someone being elected, then someone being dumped, and somebody being elected again. That we call it a democratic practice, right? So And what does he tell us about American culture or world culture? I think it's the best product of American culture. Capitalism, come to a clear nude uh ideology of make a deal uh art of a deal so all he concentrated is about deal it's not no ideology no philosophy but let's see what kind of deal comes out. And the corruption and the lies and the corrup tion? I'm not entitled to tell about corruption because I I know very little about the corruption Number, it's hard to remember, three billion or something. But uh, I don't know you can call it a corruption or just a political gaining. Of all the countries you've lived in, rank them in order of the country that you felt was closest to your sense of what a country should feel like? You've had China, you've had Britain, you've had Germany, you've had Portugal. Is there any one of those countries 'cause you said at the start, you never really felt at home in China, you never really felt at home in the United States. Where have you felt most of it? Well, I am I'm a glob al citizen. No, not even citizen. Citizen means you you have certain rights to be called a citizen. I'm just uh I don't know, a creature which uh maybe most fit into my ideology would be the moon. The moon. Yeah. He doesn't really interest in the moon. He interests in some Mars. Okay. Yes . Are you interested in the idea of the scholar gentleman like your father, your grandfather? Do you think this is an important idea for life? I think it is the absolutely most important idea of uh for an individual can can be proud of is uh to be uh independent thinker and uh to act on your belief. And explain a little bit more about the idea of uh this Chinese idea for people so they can understand. Chinese idea about uh a scholar rather is not just to help to build your inner strength but also to serve the the mass, to serve the people. So the in old time all the kin and the scholars only have one goal to to serve the bigger purpose. You know, can be poet, can be writer, they all write calligraphy, they all have a deep understanding of past and uh that always been considered as the highest ritual. You said earlier you had res a lot of respect for Mao or, there was a lot of respect for Mao. You clearly had respect for Deng Xiaoping. What's your assessment of President Xi? We are about the same generation. He's three years older than me. I don't even know him. His father and my father are close uh friend . And of course we are both punished. Huh? They're both punis hed? Yes, his father also punished for a while. But uh, you know, that's in revolution. Being polished uh uh how they say being purged or it's not uh exactly uh a bad thing, you know, because it's too many struggles in different moment. I cannot uh give personal adja uh this adjustment about him yeah. Yeah assessment b only because uh I'm not in the same position. I'm as an individual artist. He's uh taking care of this uh big state. But from foreign policy I would uh uh agree with him uh not him, but uh China's national policy in relate to uh Middle East in relate to uh world peace in relate to uh nobody should or interfere other nations uh business, not like US, not like Britain. But Russia and Ukraine? Russia and Ukraine? Russia and Ukraine, they also uh kept themselves as a neutral position. They are not really supporting Russian. They are they are associated with Russian because geopolitics is uh if they don't, you know because US, also because West. You know, with NATO with the US, there's no such a war. So you this is clear. Can I we we we're moving back and forth, but I think my final question, I want to bring you back to the idea of the scholar and the gentleman. So thank you. So for example, in the Tang dynasty, often the officials would leave the imperial court and then they would return back to the countryside. Tell me a little bit about what this means in terms of people's lives, the meaning of I uh thank you for mentioning those details because I seems you're uh profound uh scholar in terms of history. I only can from my experience one during cultural revolution after that although very end Chemomo had the idea all the educated university students should go back to factory and the farmer. Farming. They said this is a much bigger world, and you can do so many things when you're there. But beginning people do not really understand, but I do understand. In the present she has been working in the very bottom. I grew up in the very bottom. So I think what teaches the most it' nots school, but uh really about a society, about a people, about struggle from the bottom. My final question. I mentioned in the introduction that you've you've focused a lot in your work now on the theme of re refugees. And as we said, you you lived in Germany and there was a point where Germany took in an awful lot of Syrian refugees, and you said this. Europeans should not have the privilege to feel any moral superiority. Asking for gratitude from those who are struggling makes me sick. And I just wondered what what you think governments should be doing about the extraordinary refugee flows that are in the world. This is a very c uh a question with such a com more complex level. Now we are dealing something like uh let's let's say is a cancer. Then in the West we always think that cancer we have to cut it off, we have to use all kind of treatment. But with Chinese medicine, we think we have to provide that become a cancer. That's a living style. That's that's uh some kind of philosophy. And uh what you eat, how what you're behaving? So prevent that is much more important than to just treat it. That's a Chinese medicine's philosophy. I totally agree. With the refugee situation, we have to look at history or why the so so many people have to prove themselves with their family, you know, their language, their tradition, their religion, come to some place like Germany or Switzerland which completely very hard to to settle. You know, even for me, not as that kind of refugee is still very hard for me to settle. So we have to have a compassion and to under stand they are escaped the war and the famine and who caused those war and famine. We have to really question ourselves why we don't help them to stay at their home. Thank you very much. Thank you, Vita. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you . Well, Rory, I found that very very, interesting. Yeah, well what do you I mean what did you think of that? I it was not what I expected. Um because it strikes me that we were getting perilously close to lots of whataboutery. And I don't know. I mean, so he's defined the whole time as dissident, and yet he seemed at pains at almost every stage of the of the conversation to be far more defensive of China at various stages in his history. Now, whether that's age, whether it's the fact that he's just been there, whether it's the fact that he's just reconnected with his mother, who I think is in her nineties, she's ninety-three and she'd met her son the grandson. But he seemed a lot more romantic about China than I was expecting. Well I think there's also the the the the first experience I was being a bit pompous about Solternitzon, but there's this famous moment where Soldier Nitson gives a speech at Harvard where he attacks the United States. And so during the Cold War and everyone goes ballistic, because this guy's been celebrated as an anti-Soviet dissident. Partly I I guess it's also the personal experience. I mean it was clearly unbelievably difficult and tough for him living in America in the 80s, early 90s. He must have felt profoundly homesick. He could barely speak English. He's in a completely alien culture. He's right down there on the minimum wage, struggling to get by. And yeah, he he returns to China. But I mean how you weigh it up, and we didn't, but if people want to pick up his autobiography, it's absolutely unbelievable. That's the earlier book, not the current book. But it's absolutely unbelievable. I mean essentially he doesn't want to call it a concentration camp. But it's certainly a labour camp. A re education camp, I think they actually they actually called it. And it's right in the middle of the desert in one of the most arid, remote places on e arth. And it's basically a military base. And his father, who had been at one point, you know, the most famous poet in China, is stuck with his young son in a tiny little ro om. They can't heat it. His father's got is wearing an old jacket that's just kind of burnt pieces to. He's trying to put enough money together for his tobacco. He's outside the dining hall every day. He has to watch his father beating a drum and saying, I'm a writer's traitor to the gun. And then every evening his father has to fully prostrate himself and lie down and be mocked. And his and his and his one of his jobs was to clean the toilets. That's the point he made about it. So his father's life was extraordinary because he went from being the son of a relatively prosperous landlord, I mean what we'd call a kind of country gentlem an, to then absolutely not hing. And then his I We We has built himself out of that horror. You made a good analogy with Xi Jinping, or in Jet people, Jun Chang, who's five years older. All these people who went through the 50s in the Cultural Revolution, it's almost impossible imposblesi for anyone to imagine. You go from being wealthy and actually quite privileged in the Communist Party system, smashed right down to the bottom where you are on the edge of being killed and worked to death, and then you rise up again. And it was interesting as well, he's I mean you get the I get the sense and I've read I read that book a while ago, the his bought autobiography. I found his book on censorship a bit strange because I I mean maybe we're being what about here, but I think it is quite hard to say that you equate our freedom of speech with what the freedom of speech in China. Is 10,000 times worse. My Chinese friends are afraid to speak openly now in any way about the government. If you post the wrong thing on the internet, it's not like these hate speech things. I mean the the uh it's very difficult to get this across to people. Maybe people need to go to China more and spend more time talking Chinese. Well to well to understand the the the total difference. It is a police state. It's a totalitarian police state. Right. And think back. I was there at the Andover. It's not that long ago, quarter of a century. And Hong Kong is a very, very different. Right. I was I was born in Hong Kong. Yeah, I know. And the Chinese Communist Party essentially is like a military organisation, runs it like a military state. I have friends who've been journalists there for many years simply carga visas to go back in and report. But we don't need to prosecute that on the thing. I mean I think there's a sort of bigger But what's that about? But but but he's he's he's but um I have many people in Britain who sound like him. I mean that that is what a lot of the people who support Jeremy Corbyn's party sound like when I talk to seventeen, eighteen year olds. This what app boundary is not very surprising, right? You you must be used to it from your use, people say how about this? How about that, how about that? Stuart George W. Bush went to jail for nine months. Which we don't talk about. No, and all c all I can remember at the time was George W. Bush laughing it off and talking about his shoe size. Uh so yeah, listen, he's got a point, but I I I found the maybe we were both indulging in No, no, I think you did you did what you needed to do, which was to register that you you don't want to take this at face value. Okay. But Julian Assange, I get it's a big cause for for the left. I get that. But I think I made a fair point there. If that was tuning this on in China, leaking thousands of Chinese state secrets, he wouldn't have survived. Yeah, I also think that one of the things, and I don't think this is not getting into it but he his I I guess his sympathies are quite Corbinista if you hear him about Russia, Ukraine and NATO. It's simply not true that China's not supporting Russia and Ukraine. I mean all the components for the Russian drones depend on Chinese uh secondary equipment. Uh the oil revenue flying into Russia comes a lot from China. I mean Russia would simply not be able to do what it's doing in Ukraine without China and actually China has made a real choice to back Russia and Ukraine if they hadn't Russia would be a weak position. But I guess the the the issue with interviewing an artist or a sports person is whether it really makes sense to try to interrogate them as a geopolitical comment The thing was though that right from the top, I having described him as an artist and activist, he clearly I think sees himself as an activist. Every bit as much as an artist. Trevor Burrus And presumably he's also irritated with the fact that for twenty years he's been uh used, he may feel as an instrument for anti Chinese attacks. And he's a bit fed up with it. Yeah. And so he's gonna flip it around and and enjoy tweaking the tail of the people. I d and it d you can't. But I think from his point of view, he's probably may have felt that he's been used for a long time as a stick to beat the Chinese government. He's just been to see his mom in ch I wonder whether, although he said he's never really felt at home anywhere, whether actually ultimately there is something about as you get towards the latter stages of your life, you are more drawn to your homeland. Yeah. And I wonder if that's going on. And and where you come from. I mean look, I don't wanna push this into our own personal lives, but he clearly was not did not have a comfortable time in the States and he didn't have that comfortable time in Germany. I hesitate to raise the famous issue of Alistair going to Cambridge, but it's quite possible that there are experiences that you have in your life where which make you think actually I'm not like these people, I'm something different and actually it gives you more desire to defend where you came from. Mm. I thought the thing about his son was very