Thread by @Telegraph

🗣️ “The West trying to understand China is like a soccer school trying to understand how to play a chess game.”

Ai Weiwei talks to The Telegraph about his views on Covid, the Olympics and privacy in China

Read the full interview 👇
telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/ai…

🌍🌏 One difference between China and the West according to Weiwei – a Chinese exile since birth – is that “in China, there’s no privacy or individual will.

🗣️ “Everything belongs to the Party, you are the property of the Party”

🌩️ Weiwei is known for his outspoken nature. Most recently, he’s been challenged not by critics but by his nearly-13-year-old son.

Weiwei explains that his son, who attends school in Cambridge, is “already a very Cambridge boy.

"He tells me: ‘keep your mouth shut!’”

But at 64, Weiwei won’t be silenced anytime soon. This is a man whose father was sent to a labour camp because he believed writers should have creative freedom.
telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/ai…

Weiwei lived in the camps between the ages of 10 and 15.

Now, he's described as a “thorn in the side of the Chinese government”

Most recently, Weiwei has criticized China’s zero-Covid policy as an example of the country’s authoritarianism.

“It has become a kind of psychological warfare to prove what china is capable of”

🔇 He accuses China of silencing the public: “China has 1.4 billion people, and among them are 90 million Communist Party who have to do whatever the Party wants them to do and keep the Party’s secrets”

🇨🇳 Weiwei contemplated whether or not premier Xi Jinping’s leadership is regressing China to the all-controlling cult of the Mao Zedong era.

He says, “the two leaders are similar because they strongly believe China can take over.

“They might be right”
telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/ai…

Despite his strong opinions, Ai Weiwei doesn’t consider himself to be extraordinary.

“I think I’m the most normal example of an individual, but I think I’m quite liberated”

Read the full interview 👇
telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/ai…