Between the lines

A long time ago, I wrote affectionately about an artist I know here who used to carve traditional Chinese signature seals - 'chops' - for me. This is someone I've known since fairly shortly after I arrived in Beijing: I went to his wedding; I held his daughter in my arms when she was two days old; I enjoyed one of my pleasantest Christmases with his family.

I have followed his career over these past several years, and have always tried to support the openings of his shows. Just last October, I wrote this brief appreciation of one of his typically quirky pieces.

Like most artists, he's passionate and idealistic, occasionally a little over-excitable and outspoken - that's why we love him. In the past, though, any 'subversiveness' tended to be more social or aesthetic rather than directly political, and was informed by a schoolboyish sense of mischief rather than a determination to lock horns with the authorities. (I particularly liked his piece a few years back, 'Monkey King In The Crystal Palace', a reference to an incident in the classic Chinese tale Journey To the West, where the infamously irresponsible simian 'hero' causes havoc in a glass mansion under the sea. He constructed a rather realistic-looking 'bomb' out of pieces of scrap metal, and then wheeled it into the city on a donkey-cart, leading to rubber-necking and traffic jams on the 3rd Ringroad, and much perplexity on the part of the police as to how they should respond. The building management at the Jianwai SOHO mall complex, where it was to have been displayed in a garden, decided that it was too 'disruptive of public order' and locked it away in a basement. The discomfiture of the authorities was more the point of the exercise than the sculpture itself, I think; discomfiture, but nothing more.)

In recent years, though, he's become increasingly politicized in his outlook - largely through the art community's frequent unhappy collisions with rent-gouging landlords and avaricious property developers (who, in turn, are invariably hand-in-glove with corrupt government officials). This recent profile by Evan Osnos in The New Yorker suggests that some of his contemporaries had started to compare him, in a modest way, to Ai WeiWei, the Chinese art world's 'superstar activist'.

This February, he led a protest march down Chang'an Dajie in the centre of Beijing, calling attention to the violent intimidation that was being used to try and force him and other artists to vacate an 'art village' in the Changdian suburb. I noted at the time that this had given us all some cause for anxiety. This might seem like a very routine and trivial assertion of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association to those of us from the West, where these rights are somewhat taken for granted. In China, this kind of thing just does not happen - certainly not in the heart of the capital, less than a mile from the official residences of the Party leaders in Zhongnanhai. At first, things seemed to have passed off well enough: there were no arrests during the demonstration, and a few weeks later there was news of what seemed to be a small 'victory' - the artists were still being evicted, but had at least received a promise of some compensation. But still we worried that there might be repercussions against the leaders of the protest.


Seven weeks ago, my friend disappeared.

Eventually, it came to light that he was being held in custody by the police. His family had not been officially notified of this (as Chinese law theoretically requires - but who's to enforce such 'rules'?). He was allowed only very token access to a lawyer during his first month in detention. He's only been allowed a couple of very brief visits from his wife. Apparently, Chinese law has no custody time limits as such, and does not even require that a formal arrest be made until someone has been held for 5 weeks. It seems there are no clear guidelines, much less 'requirements', with regard to making a charge or scheduling a trial date either - although it appears that things are now moving forward at last, and the situation should become clearer during the next few months.

Peter Foster, the China correspondent for the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper, was one of the first foreign journalists to pick up on the story, on his blog (in this further update he included an English translation of the official witness statement of a friend who was with the artist when he was taken into custody). It's also been covered in the Toronto Star and the New York Times.



I'm not sure if my friend's arrest really has much if anything to do with his 'political' activities, if it is some kind of payback for having ruffled the feathers of some of the denizens of Zhongnanhai (or the more lowly local Party officials in Chaoyang District whose lucrative redevelopment plans have been delayed and embarrassed by his resistance); it might be that he's just the unlucky victim of some random vindictiveness by the police. Unfortunately, there's nothing all that uncommon about his case: he is representative of tens of thousands of ordinary Chinese citizens who are rode roughshod over by the authorities every year, abused and beaten by the police, thrown into jail for long - sometimes indefinite - terms.... for no good reason at all.... and with no semblance of an effective criminal justice system to protect them.

People sometimes try to tell me that 'the rule of law' is an abstruse and relatively unimportant concept; that the Chinese people are happy enough to get by without it, fearing that its introduction might hamper the meteoric rise of their economy. No - 'the rule of law' is the foundation of everything else, it is essential to a civilised society; there can be no true or lasting 'prosperity' without it.

This is something we should all be ANGRY about - not about the fate of one man, but about a legal system that can swallow people like a black hole..... and about a government that feels it needs such medieval mechanisms of oppression to hold on to its power. We shouldn't need to wait until it happens to someone we know to feel this ANGER. This affects us all, every single one of us who lives in China, Chinese and foreign alike: something like this could happen to any one of us at any time. It is happening to dozens, hundreds of people every day. And it is always someone you know: your neighbour, your uncle, your classmate, your fruit-seller.... someone like you.... you.

[There's not really anything that can be done to help this situation. The Chinese authorities tend to react very negatively to external pressure, and I am rather nervous that too much foreign press interest in the case might prove counter-productive. I'm wary even of talking about it too openly here on the blog.

However, my friend's wife and daughter are both Canadian citizens; and it is highly likely that he will become one himself as soon as this nightmare is over. The Canadian government has made some expressions of support, and claims to be 'monitoring' the case. Therefore, if you are Canadian, it might be helpful to keep up the pressure on your government to involve itself as effectively as possible by writing a letter to your elected representative, or direct to the office of the Prime Minister, saying that you are aware of this case and concerned about its outcome.]