Barbarian Lost (29 page)

“No, but it's guaranteed to us in our Basic Law, our constitution signed by the Brits and the Chinese before the handover. The problem is that it was set out with no timetable. So before any real election of candidates, Beijing can use its influence over the nominating committee that approves candidatures to block anyone it doesn't like.”

“I'm sorry to refer back to history, but given that Hong Kong was obtained through foreign aggression, and considering China's obsession with unity, is it so surprising that China would want to keep close tabs on this place?”

“That's easy for you to say, Sacha. I know Canada well. I admire it. But could you truly say that we here in Hong Kong would be less suited, less deserving of the freedoms that you have? Forget democracy; consider only the rule of law. Why would you ask me to give up on this?”

“Perhaps it's only a matter of patience. China's still healing. Keep bandages secure over wounds that are healing.”

“Or leave them on so long and so tight that they hide rot underneath. But I wasn't finished with the newspaper. Would you like me to continue about the
Post
?”

“Absolutely.”

“Since its founding, the
Post
has rightly had a reputation as a reputable newspaper—balanced and thorough. A paper one can be proud to work for. It still is. But something has been worrying me about a loosening of standards around the subject of China: management no longer has the same appetite for good reporting about the mainland. Not just for the stuff critical of the party but also for just about anything of substance concerning the mainland. We publish plenty of stories about the mainland, sure, but more and more fluff. Celebrity culture, bland announcements, disaster reporting, you know.”

“Sounds like media in general. Keep people entertained and distracted.”

“Come on!” Milton says. “I'm sure that you agree that newspapers have a vital role in sustaining healthy political debate. A responsibility, even. People should have access to the broadest amount of information possible, without filters.”

“Who owns the
Post
?”

“Rupert Murdoch used to own it, but he sold a large share to a powerful Malaysian Chinese family in the mid-1990s. They
are business-oriented. You can see how this might lead to a softer approach toward the mainland.”

“It all seems unavoidable to me,” I argue. “The
Post
likely makes its money through advertising, and Hong Kong corporations are more and more linked to the mainland markets and production facilities.”

“Still, it's unnatural for the
Post
. It also makes for a newspaper that is growing more boring to read. And a less interesting place to work. I might have to leave. This saddens me. I'm a newspaper man, and I want to live in Hong Kong. I love it here.”

The three of us emerge into the buzz of the balmy evening. We part ways fraternally. Milton returns to his gentle self to take his leave. True to ritual, I too put on some mantle of humility, only slightly tainted by my sly intentions.

I had vowed not to take my own conceits with me into China. To fight them off with every breath, as I did with Milton. But how long can I resist China bringing those conceits to me? I vowed not to carry my own republicanism into China, to be open to whatever unique constellations might guide the country. But again and again, my respected Chinese interlocutors challenge me with the same hopes for China. The Chinese, they fiercely argue, deserve every right a Canadian has. Everyone does, in fact.

Of course they do. But how do we get there?

In a serenade of reedpipes and song, I drunkenly return.

—Ouyang Xiu,
After the Lotus Flowers Have Opened
,

eleventh century

“Long-time resident here? Or just passing through?” the famous artist Ai Weiwei asks as he receives me in Beijing.

I cobble together some sort of a reply to try to avoid his quick judgment. But even I'm unconvinced by my awkward answer. He shows no emotion. He looks tired. Or weary, is it?

I'm not Ai's first foreign interview of the day, nor perhaps the last. The man is a performer and a campaigner, as well as an artist. Whoever I might be, rube or sophisticate, he would humour me, find out what I wanted, try to give it to me and then send me packing.

It's the summer of 2008 and the Olympic Games will soon be held in the north capital. I'm starting a new assignment covering culture in China to complement the sports coverage.

Vivien is back in Beijing for the summer after an initial year in grad school in the United States, but she is staying out of the sweltering city action. She's introduced me to former colleagues who agreed to do research and translations for me. We've approached some of the city's artists for interviews about the new China.

I'm joined now by Richard, cameraman extraordinaire of the CBC, a Dakota from south Saskatchewan and a most impressive figure, tall and broad as a sumo wrestler. He consistently wears Bermuda shorts, golf shirts and hiking shoes, as if it were a uniform. He keeps his long, dark hair in a ponytail. Richard never fails to impress the Chinese, who sometimes even recognize him as Aboriginal Canadian. This awes them a little and puts them in a good mood. “Just like in the movies: a cowboy and an Indian,” one artist joked as the two of us walked into the studio with our gear.

Leading up to the Games, news editors everywhere are looking for balance and trying to present the other side of all the splendour. Hordes of journalists, me included, are streaming to Ai Weiwei, who beyond his influential work as an artist is known as one of the Communist Party of China's most vocal critics.

He has just made waves in the foreign press by declaring his unwillingness to participate in any facet of the Games, all while being trumpeted as one of the designers of the now iconic National Stadium—the Bird's Nest.

“You're completely without interest in these Games?” I ask.

“Okay,” he admits, “this is a great time for China. I won't deny that. But the government tells the people of Beijing that the best way to participate in the Games is to stay home and watch television. So I'm doing what I'm told.”

Ai tells me that the Games are just a propaganda show. Participants are selected to carry a specific message. But the “same world, same dream” motto of the Games is hollow and meaningless. He wants nothing to do with the spectacle.

“So the people are unsatisfied?” I ask, prodding.

“The people are uneducated,” he says, then explains that China is not a peaceful or righteous society. The harmony is an illusion.

“What do you make of the growing prosperity?” I continue.

“China has changed and made much progress. Some circumstances have not changed. For some people, prosperity is a big deal. But we have no democracy here. No protection from arbitrary power. Corruption is everywhere.”

With camera, lights and microphones, Richard and I have Ai captive. I slip into documentary mode. Jaded reporter meets weary celebrity for a conversation. A performance structured around our different agendas. Campaigning for his own notoriety, Ai won't be let off the hook easily. He'll be made to defend his ideas. While I'll lead the witness, amuse or enrage him if necessary.

Documentary filmmaking is like sculpting with small segments of reality. Nobody watching the final product should see or feel the handiwork that has gone into it. We edit tedious, uncomfortable raw footage. We discard failed questions and answers. The rest is cherry-picked and then distilled. Intentions are sought behind the ambiguities of free speech and language barriers. Brilliance is discovered among the dross. Film doesn't need real men or women, but icons.

Ai Weiwei knows this. He has seen his share of players, princes and bullshitters. You don't become a famous artist in this world without knowing how to play the game and dance to a tune. He doesn't care how smart or stupid I am. How wise or foolish. He has accepted the audience that I bring. For them, his performance might endure. Ai enjoys himself well enough wired up under all the lights and on display in the hot seat.

Who wants to be a poor and obscure artist when one can be an icon?

Mostly he's unflappable.

Again and again, I suggest that Ai consider tempering his criticisms of Chinese realities and consider results instead of principles. But he will not. He is categorical: the current China is poorly structured.

I turn to history and suggest that there has likely never been democracy or individual rights in his country. Or a time without corruption.

“Anyone educated cannot but hope for the rule of law and respect for the individual,” he counters, then calls the current state of things shameful, no matter how much wealth is created or how many advances are being made.

“Is the system economically flawed as well?”

“Yes. After thirty years of providing manufacturing labour to the world,” Ai explains, “China has grown rich.” But he argues that the future has been sacrificed and the current system cannot go on forever; change must happen. He describes problems of morality and of creativity at the foundations. He explains that the central government knows that the people now need more. So it comes up with patriotic spectacle and recognizes the need for art. But art does not just happen on command, he declares.

I'm dogged: “Aren't things getting better and better? I mean, the government seems to be tolerating the likes of you. This seems an improvement.”

“Yes,” he says. “I'm sitting here being interviewed by the foreign press, saying all sorts of things. Yes, I'm critical. I'm an artist: I say what I see. I have no choice. I have to be truthful. And yes, this is new and different. But we must do much better. We're ready for it.”

I consider a photo that's leaning against the wall of his studio. In the background stands the White House; in the foreground
there is a raised middle finger, dominant though slightly blurry. I turn to the principles Ai espouses.

“Having seen the world, have you seen a lot of justice in it?” I list off conflicts I recently covered and point at the dishonesty and imperialism behind them.

“Okay, good question,” he says with a giggle before arguing that if I'm correct and we are indeed living in such a troubled world, then China has even more reason to be principled.

I finally relent in my assault on his liberal ideas and lob a loose question about the environment, to which he answers, “The Chinese people are as concerned about the environment as any other tradition in the world. It's part of our philosophy. But we have sacrificed this conscience too. Change must happen,” he repeats, “or China will not go on.”

I've filled a full hour of interview space without mirth or joy. As a guilty afterthought, I awkwardly query the man as to whether he's happy in China and in Beijing.

This he quickly answers with glee. “Oh yes, I'm happy. I'm happy with what I'm doing here.”

Richard then whispers to me, “Let me do some stuff with him.”

The cameraman follows Ai into the grand showroom. It's brightly lit from above and has painted-white brick walls and polished concrete floors like a proper gallery. On display are several of Ai's works: mostly massive, geometric wooden sculptures.

Without hesitation or direction, Ai positions himself over a dish of sunflower seeds set at the edge of the room and slowly stirs them with his fingers. Richard slides around him, capturing all the angles as Ai slowly lifts the seeds up and lets them slide through his fingers, dropping them one by one.

Unbeknown to me, they are not actual seeds but painted
porcelain sculptures. Ai will have a hundred million of them produced, to pile up a foot deep across the floor of a huge room at the Tate Modern. Spectators—participants—will wade through the seeds, lie in them and interact with them.

Once completed, the colour effect of
Sunflower Seeds
will be potent: a perfect grey made up of millions of black-and-white “seeds,” the balance of dark and light. The earth, water and fire that went into their composition, the many hands, the distance and the gold that bring about their creation recede.

It's the tactility of the many seeds that will speak out most loudly. The feel of them underfoot. The gentle, mineral sound they make as they rattle together when one lies down in them. Handmade, each one is singular. It's unique, alive almost.

But all this is lost on me in Beijing right now. I blankly watch Ai move to caress one of his sculptures, a giant wooden form in the centre of the room. Finally, Richard directs Ai toward a large armoire-like affair and has him gaze through the round aperture that pierces it.

Ai is wearing a black-and-white outfit, and with his wide face, choppy hair and rotund physique, he looks rather like a panda. The two men move calmly, gracefully even. The patience and the peacefulness of their rapport are touching. While I'm all sound and fury, I grimly tell myself.

All I asked the great artist about was politics. I even stood in for his judges.

Still, the man proved himself. Under pressure, he was coherent, devoted, methodical and brave. He was also right. Respect for the individual is the first premise of the just society. No political conversation worth having can ever start without a vow to uphold each other's freedom and dignity.

This is dogma, of course. Or credo.

Still, who would not wish to be so resolute and brave as Ai? To calmly hold the line for such a cause? The only sad part is that it seems a losing battle for him. The dynasty is not yet crumbling. The Communist Party of China cannot endure forever, but for the moment, the CPC's China, failings and all, is solid. There will be no revolution. Only slow transformation.

Deep down, all states tend toward corporatism. Even democratic states tend to make the individual's political power more and more illusory, to restrict the people's choices, supposedly for their own good.

Power is stubborn. It accrues and resists reorganization. Majorities oppress minorities, and minorities abuse majorities. And won't the people trade in so much when they fear violence? The republic is not completely without recourse against the ineluctable concentrations of power. A truly independent judiciary held to order by an enduring code may offer some bulwark. But where can this ideal claim to be securely entrenched?

Economic power matters more. Wealth creation and the state distribution of wealth, however balanced together, aim to bring about possibilities for individuals. As long as bellies are full and minds stimulated, citizens will be more interested in themselves than in the affairs of state, more interested in what they can buy or do with their free time than in the active law-making that goes on in their name. The perception of freedom also makes a good stand-in for actual freedom. Although progress is felt by the masses, true critics, however right and respected, stand alone. There are too many temptations against taking a stand and too many fears for the consequences. Even advanced states periodically offer reminders that an individual's preservation is
at stake, that those who take a stand, right or wrong, could be made to suffer or pay dearly. Think of the whistleblowers Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.

As if it were scripted, the regime eventually would crack down on Ai. He's made to suffer for the stand he's taken for so long. The outspoken critic isn't muzzled or his statements even contradicted; he's simply arrested, detained, roughed up and charged with tax crimes. The state's message is clear: this man who never shuts up to foreigners about public morals in China is himself unethical and corrupt.

Charging someone with economic crimes in China can be a little rich. Fiscal compliance is never perfect anywhere—far from it. But the fiscal situation in China is especially complex and fluid. Through its tight control of the currency and its continued role in a wide variety of commercial activities, Chinese state's coffers are filled and refilled, allowing much flexibility in collecting taxes in any systematic manner from small fry, though the laws permit it in numerous ways. Total compliance can be quite low.

In China, as in more developed societies, the pursuit of total compliance will butt up against a cost-benefit analysis. The administrative costs are determined to outweigh amounts that can be recouped by collection efforts. There's a solid contingent of working poor people in China, migrant and temporary labour, people unhabituated to the fiscal requirements of developed economies and too insignificant to be made to account for their revenues.

The Chinese government is also seeking to build up consumer equity. It lets a good chunk of free-earning people spend their incomes freely. Perhaps they even feel guilty about this freedom. In any case, sales taxes are increasingly collected to offset the gaps in income taxation or customs collection from small earners.

Finally, there are subtle and sinister benefits to complicated yet loosely applied regimes of law. Compliance difficulties mean that anyone rich and powerful has likely broken rules to get there. With the CPC more or less directly administering the organs of justice, it has legitimate licence to crush just about anyone successful when it might be strategic to do so.

Economic arguments also play out in the most recent power struggles within the CPC leadership structures. The purge of Bo Xilai, a powerful member of the inner circle, and the removal of a string of high officials like Zhou Yongkang from the security sector, unfold semi-publicly as a prosecution of these men for high economic crimes.