Jasmine Repression
Ai Weiwei: Sent into darkness? View Enlarged Image
China: When a great civilization can't tolerate its greatest artists, it's in decline. When a once-great civilization, trying to recover its lost heritage, arrests great artists, it can't ascend.
On April 3, Ai Weiwei, an individualistic artist who works in media from film to architecture, was detained and "disappeared" as he waited to board a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong. The net also fell on Ai's wife and staff as his Beijing studio was sealed and reportedly ransacked, his computers seized.
By this act of repression, China's despotic regime elevated Ai to a renown beyond what he already enjoyed. This, after all, was the artistic consultant behind the Beijing National Stadium, the famous Bird's Nest, built to assert Chinese global identity for the 2008 Olympics.
Understand that Ai in recent years was snarking on Twitter and elsewhere about various doings of the regime. In that Olympic year he exposed what he saw as a corruption scandal related to collapsed schools in the Sichuan earthquake.
In February, as Chinese authorities watched the Arab upheaval, online dissidents called for similar "Jasmine Rallies."
Ai wryly tweeted: "I didn't care about jasmine at first, but people who are scared by jasmine sent out information about how harmful jasmine is often, which makes me realize that jasmine is what scares them the most."
Apparently, the night-blooming scent of Ai's tweet was enough to have him sent into darkness. Presumably alive, he dwells there with myriad other dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.
It's sometimes said that Chinese authorities needn't fear a "Jasmine Revolution" because the Middle Kingdom's staggering economic growth has made too many citizens materially comfortable and complacent.
But clearly the regime is worried as reports spill out about continuing riots in the left-behind countryside.
As Beijing bids for global glory, its political class should hearken back to the great philosopher Lao Tzu. Anticipating Jefferson by two millennia, he taught that the greatest government is the lightest government.
That would mean releasing artists and dissidents.
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