Editor’s Note: Ai Weiwei, 64, is an artist and activist. His sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism, however, has long made him a target of Chinese authorities, and in 2011, he was detained for “inciting the subversion of state power.” He was held captive for 81 days and fined $2.4 million. After his passport was returned to him in 2015, he moved to Europe, where he has been living in exile since. What follows is an excerpt from his newly published memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows.
On April 3, 2011, as I was about to fly out of Beijing’s Capital Airport, a swarm of plainclothes police descended on me, and for the next 81 days I disappeared into a black hole.
My son had just turned 2 years old, and during my confinement I began to reflect on my own father, Ai Qing, who had himself spent thr
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On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
