Ai Weiwei: China, Censorship, and Dissidence Through Art
3/23/20261 hr 8 min
Why was Ai Weiwei kidnapped and held prisoner by the Chinese government? How did the 2008 Sichuan earthquake radicalise him into taking aim at the authorities through art? What’s behind Ai Weiwei’s belief that there is a serious censorship issue in the West?
Rory and Alastair are joined by Artist and Activist, Ai Weiwei, to answer all this and more.
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First 90 secondsAlastair Campbell· Host0:00
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Rory Stewart· Host0:12
[upbeat music] Welcome to The Rest is Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart.
Alastair Campbell· Host0:23
And with me, Alastair Campbell, and we're very pleased to have Ai Weiwei. 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