Ai Weiwei: The Price of China's Success

I think first there’s many issues China is facing, and it’s very complicated. And to try to survive in the competition, they sacrificed a lot of rights, which also are about the environment. And they also sacrificed the education, and the whole society has become extremely corrupted, and also extremely incapable to make clear decisions, and the judicial system is also paralyzed.

But about the environment, I think which certainly relates to everybody’s life. If you talk about a natural environment, it’s about air, water, and food safety, and all those concerns, which today is a great trouble for China. We’ve found poison in almost everything. In all the rivers polluted, all the seafood are polluted. And our milk is polluted, our meat is polluted, our vegetables are polluted.

Almost every Chinese, when they come to a table, they always have something in their mind: is what they're eating suitable for the body or is it dangerous for their children? This has become such a concern no one can avoid. So, you can see the change of society really comes from those concerns, which involve everybody. It doesn’t matter your political status or what kind of ideology you have, whether you're patriotic or you’re just an activist.

But still, the safety and the well-being of daily life, and also the concern for the environment, are really major concerns of China today. First, for any society— not to mention China, which has such large and complicated conditions and a long history— to survive, you have to have a sense of justice and fairness.

It’s a property of the public, and people should believe justice exists in this society. And that can be achieved through the struggle. So, certainly, China doesn’t have an independent judicial system. For a long time, this kind of justice has never existed. That’s really a problem. Because it doesn’t exist, people have no trust in any kind of policy and any kind of news or media, because there’s no freedom of expression.

And so, how can you have a society working together or trying to maintain this kind of stability without the trust in information and the belief in justice? So, that is so fascinating. Today, I’m sure that questions the legitimacy of power. Why do you have to maintain a nation that does not trust its own people? Not to let them judge their fate.

So this is constantly questioned, and they can never face the question, and they can never answer it. For me, I think, this has to be achieved: the so-called independent judicial system, so that society can have a measurement of what is right or wrong, and not just according to a party’s will. That is a completely evil act.

And also, I think the freedom of expression, which relates to everybody, and the freedom to get information and to communicate, that’s absolutely necessary, not just for artists like me, but for everybody. So no society can achieve any kind of greatness without doing so.