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‘China Is Laughing About This Situation’

Legendary Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei talks about Trump, Western democracy and the plight of refugees around the world.

By SUSAN B. GLASSER

Ai Weiwei is making a strong case for himself as America’s leading dissident of the Trump era.

Never mind that he’s Chinese, or that he lives in Berlin in de facto exile these days.

The legendary artist, who has long embraced political themes in his work, has gone full-out activist in a new feature-length documentary film about the global refugee crisis, called Human Flow and released in theaters across the U.S. Friday, and in a new, New York City-wide public art exhibit of 300 works in dozens of locations called “Good Walls Make Good Neighbors.”

Both are explicit rebuttals of the nationalistic, America-First-fueled policies espoused by Trump, from his proposed Mexican border wall to his curbs on immigration that include admitting the smallest number of refugees to the U.S. in decades.

In a new interview for The Global Politico during a rare visit to Trump’s Washington, Weiwei referred to Trump’s win as “the moment I think history stopped,” a “backward” evolution that undermines liberal ideas like freedom of speech and human dignity everywhere.

Authoritarian leaders in China and elsewhere are the beneficiaries of Trump and the crisis of American democracy, said Weiwei, who spent four years under house arrest and forbidden to leave China before being allowed to leave the country two years ago.

“China is laughing about this situation,” he said. “China, Russia, they all laugh about it.”

When we met in Georgetown recently, I found Weiwei most compelling when talking about why he made the film, a “strangely beautiful” documentary, as the New York Times put it, shot in 23 different countries from Asia to Africa to the Middle East and Europe over the course of a year.

It’s a call to action for Americans, he told me, and a commentary on what he sees as the breakdown of our society into a “timid” and “cowardly” and “selfish” place, one whose new role in the world is very much at odds with its self-identity as this liberal, generous nation.

“We have to save our own soul and our own mind and our own society,” he said.

The documentary is also an amazing feat of international reporting, with footage from many of the world’s hottest hot spots, and Ai Weiwei is present on screen throughout, sort of a silent narrator who is there with Afghan refugees as they return from Pakistan across the Khyber Pass; with Syrian children as they are passed off rubber boats to rescuers in the Greek islands and later, as they march, rain-soaked, through the unfriendly fields of Hungary and the Balkans in search of shelter.

But the political point about Western democracies is one that the film invariably finds its way back to – whether it’s the U.S. border guard who gives Weiwei an unintentionally hilarious lecture about how to stay on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico or the Italian police with their rubber gloves and masks, handling the refugees as if they are dangerous contaminants.

The Guardian called the movie an “urgent deep soak in the refugee crisis”; it also happens to be a haunting and appropriately sprawling portrait of a world on the move; with the number of global migrants now estimated at 65 million-plus, that includes more displaced people right now on the planet than even in the aftermath of World War II.

Still, it is in the political context of Trump that viewers will see it – and Ai Weiwei is no less critical of Trump than he was of the Chinese leaders who locked him up. I asked at the end of our conversation what he wanted to tell Trump. “He should cool down,” the artist said. “Pay more attention to the history… really understand what the U.S.’s value is about.”

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Susan Glasser: I’ve read something, it was very interesting. You said you wanted this to be a movie that wasn’t viewed by refugees. You wanted this—“Give them a cup of soup,” you said. “And let’s give it to the members of Congress.” What do you want politicians and members of the U.S. Congress to take away from this powerful but unusual movie about human migration?

Ai Weiwei: I think we are living in the 21st century and all the information are so easy to reach in almost every level. Even all those so-called national secrets also can be shared and the secrets, you know, on the internet or news. So I still think to deal with the situation like human crisis, 65 million people being displaced, lost their home, and with such human tragedy, has to make every level of society to be conscious and to be alert about the situation.

So, the politicians and the people who make decisions very often is the one we think can make some difference. But of course they will not make a difference if the citizens or the individuals not push it or not to speak out, to possess a very strong voice about, this is not acceptable.

Glasser: You say this is not acceptable, but it’s interesting that you’re coming here just nine months into President Trump’s administration. In many ways, the view of this crisis in your film, Human Flow, is almost radically opposed to the policies that he’s trying to implement here. He wants to build a wall, not to knock it down. This new nationalism, here in the United States, how do you see that?

Ai: It’s ironic. Before he becomes president—the day he become, not before. I was in the U.S./Mexico border.

Glasser: The day before?

Ai: Yes, I sensed he was going to become president. Even all my friends, hundred percent doesn’t believe it. So I made a bet. I said, “Let’s bet on some money, so later you’ll remember it.” So I went—

Glasser: What was the bet?

Ai: Tragically. Just $50 or something like that. But otherwise, you know, I cannot prove it. So on the airplane, I wake up at during the middle of flight, ask the attendant, you know, “What’s the result?” She told me Trump. That moment I think the history stopped, somehow.

So you can easily, to say as a result, now today, you’ll hear the traveling band—you know, all those things—and they’re still talking about building a wall. Then you can see how individual elected by democratic society, and a very strong background of liberty. You know, the nation defends all those very essential rights, human rights. Human dignity. Liberty. Freedom of speech. Can come out a product, a true product, which really hurting the very fundamental beliefs.

It takes generations of people to fight for this, to make that lived, you know, to add up all those efforts to defending those values. But it can be ruined with one hand. And which reflects very, very strong backwards of our human development. And that will send even worse signals to the world.

Glasser: Right. Do you think in China, for example, they take comfort from this?

Ai: I think China is laughing about this situation. You know? China, Russia, they all laugh about it. They see how dramatic U.S. has to be put this kind of shame on its own—you know, cannot handle the situation. Or show such a difficulty with this liberal ideas. Men or women created equal. And to defend those very essential ideas.

Glasser: So do you think there is anything now that can be done? I mean, you talked about this being ruined.

Ai: Yes.

Glasser: But do you feel that—a lot of people here in Washington say, “Well, okay, but we have institutions in our democracy, and we have the rule of law and not of men.” You know, what do you think?

Ai: I think that’s exactly why I make this film, is to show any individual can contribute its own belief. And that to make a clear definition about what an individual can do. And you know, our society or even our government are made by the people. The people would have the final voice, but it requires each individual to act. If we don’t act, then the result is very clear. So for too long we take liberty as granted. You know, we think we are in the safe hand, you know, the democracy and the liberty, which is not true. And it can be even getting much worse than today.

So it’s really an alarm to show how easily in society, if we don’t really—for each generation, if we don’t really defend liberty or a democracy, the situation would get really bad.

Glasser: So, you know, we had this huge debate over taking in refugees from Syria and even under President Obama, remember, there was only going to be 10,000. Donald Trump was able to use that successfully in the campaign. Do you think it is a shame on the United States not to have accepted more people? In your film, you’re filming in Jordan, you’re filming in Lebanon, where these small countries have taken in literally millions of refugees. And you know, we’re fighting over 10,000.

Ai: I think it’s a shame. But it really is a symptom. You can see how far we are shifting from a very liberal, very brave nation. The nation have courage and imagination become a timid and coward, and a selfish place. And this is not you helping the refugees. The refugee live or die, or have its own fate. But about Americans. Americans believe how you have this self-identity. How you think about yourself. How you think your own position in today’s world. And I think that really matters very much to this land.

It’s not about helping another person. You can turn your face away. But you cannot really turn a face away from yourself. You look at the mirror, then you look at your children. You think what kind of future you’re providing, and how you’re going to teach them. I mean, this is really tragic in testing or challenge our humanity, within everybody. We have to understand we’re all part of it.

Glasser: Is that why you made the film, in a way, about your own journey of trying to figure this out as opposed to help any specific refugees? You told this amazing story that you were actually in Greece, with your son and your girlfriend, and you saw the refugees come up on the beach.

Ai: Yes, I got myself involved as only with very simple intuitions, like I would like to know more about it. You know, I cannot let such a tragic thing happen but to say I don’t know about it. It’s just not my style.

Glasser: And that’s because you’re living in Berlin?

Ai: Yes. I cannot. You know, I already have my passport for years. For generations, my father had been mistreated, you know? Millions of people have been sent into labor camps. The Italians and Germans. And you know, nobody can speak out. Then today, I’m living this, you know, internet age, and I’m artist. You have some voice there, and have some influence.

If I pretend this has not happened, it’s just not me; I cannot do it. But it’s very difficult journey because I know so little. You know, this kind of education background. I know very little about what happened in the world. So I have to really jump in. I have to jump really, jump into the boat, literally.

I found a boat abandoned in the middle of the ocean. I said, “Let me be in that boat for a while.” Because that boat is already half-sunken; you know, people already not there. So I found a Bible there. I found a milk bottle there. You know, some shoes and clothes. But it’s nobody there. So I told the boat, I said, “You just leave me alone so I can stay here for a while.”

So in there, but in the middle of the ocean, I started to feel how it’s like. Just, you know, the life is very fragile in the nature, if you’re without help, without thinking, “Oh, this is another human being,” maybe care. Then, you know, there’s no hope for life. So then that made me understand how we’re facing our children, you know, to set up some kind of example to say, “I made the effort.” You know, the road can never be a perfect one, but the effort is very important.

It’s a better life to make some kind of effort. And maybe helping the other people. Maybe by recognizing ourselves, maybe just to say, “I didn’t fail the life itself,” because life means to have this kind of struggle. Life is not about just enjoy the materials and the richness of the plenteousness of the material life. But rather to be sensitive to other people’s existence.

And we are human beings. You know, this is the most beautiful name we can find. It’s about to share and to have a compassion for others.

Glasser: So you embarked on this huge project that took you to 23 different countries.

Ai: Yes, but it seems a huge project, but I think of the first refugee I interviewed, it’s a man from Afghanistan, now facing possibilities that Germans are going to send him back because they have some kind of policy which is ridiculous. You know, they take the most difficult past from this kind of war, and come to Germany now, they have been forced to send back.

Now you see all those refugees we interviewed for two years now. They’re still living in the camp. You can see the future is very dark. You know, there’s no way they can be integrated.

Glasser: And so many children. I was really blown away by that. Especially the ones coming to Europe. There’s just an extraordinarily high percentage of little children getting off of those boats.

Ai: Yes, those children are smart, healthy, but you can see they’re wasted because there’s no way you really give them a right education or even right protection. And you know, for that kind of—you know, you feel that way, then you feel the film cannot help them that much.

Glasser: In all of the countries that you went to, like for example, you not only met Afghan refugees in Germany, but you actually rode in a convoy of returning Afghan refugees from Pakistan going back. I saw you went through the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan with them. I mean, this is a very immersive experience. What surprised you? What countries were you most unprepared for? What did you learn in this?

Ai: For a film like this, you meet all kind of conditions. After a while, you feel they’re all about the same. It all comes from our negligence. And it’s all casualties for some reason they will never understand.

But what shocks me the most is the people are so privileged in Europe or in elsewhere, and not to taking the refugee condition seriously. To see millions, millions of people lost their home. And continuously developing the situation. And it’s going to get worse: the Afghan situation and what happens in Myanmar today is unacceptable.

But we are—when we start to accept those unacceptables, that tells our human condition how bad that can be. And the refugees are not people we need to really save them, but rather we have to save our own soul and our own mind, and our own society. So this is so much connected, and this kind of consciousness and alert, it should be easily understood today.

Glasser: Well, that’s right. There are many points in the film and in your own view of it that do seem addressed at Europe or the United States. You know, the antiseptic way in which the Italian, I guess their border police, are greeting the refugees and they’re wearing masks. Or in Gaza, a lot of people noted this about the film—you know, the animals seem to be treated with more humanity, in some ways.

There’s this incredible parable of the tiger who somehow ran through the tunnels, the Hamas tunnels from Egypt, and is a very unhappy tiger as a result of living in these horrible conditions. And basically, they get the government of Israel, which is basically not on speaking terms with Hamas, and South Africa and all these other governments to rescue this one tiger. And that seemed like a very powerful metaphor that you included for a reason in the film.

Ai: Yes. We see animals can be casualties of human ignorance, and also can be somehow rescued by some of our ironic situations. But that reflects our human condition today. We are or act always being decided by our own limitations, or our own visions about ourselves or other people. And there’s also kind of understanding sometimes can decide a nation’s fate, or one type of people’s fate, for years, or a hundred years could be.

So how to become a really modern society when today we are so—as a human being, we feel so powerful. You know, we have high technology and a superb way of controlling our life. And at the same time, in many ways we are so primitive. We are not on—even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. You know, to be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.

And then to really act, I think, the film encouraged each people to have their own voice, which is more the way in this democratic society to structure a better political condition.

Glasser: So you appear throughout this journey of these 23 different countries. You’re in the film, playing a different role. You’re engaging with these refugees. You know, there’s one young woman who is showing you her cat pictures on her iPhone. You have a joking exchange with somebody about trading passports and trading lives. Why are you in the film? What is your role?

Ai: I think my role is very much like a clown in the traditional theater. You know, in the emperor’s court you have people but you also have a clown there to tell a very private view about what’s going on. And then you’re trying to introduce those people. It’s just like us, in those most difficult times, still want to share their cats to another foreign artist or someone, make a film.

And all those little details, and you know, they cut your hair. You cut their hair. You know, it’s haircutting, it becomes some kind of symbolic view—a way to share some time or some touch.

Glasser: Yes, you’re talking about there’s a scene in the film where they shave off your hair.

Ai: Yes, and exchange the most valuable identity which for them, is the paper of the so-called passport. And of course, the passport, nobody really recognized their passport. We think how we recognize each other is from those details. And we really care about the same thing, we are really scared of the same thing, you know. We don’t want to be ignored or exist at same time as not exist.

Glasser: So the idea was that, in effect, you’re experiencing this as a proxy for the viewer experiencing?

Ai: I think I need to build up this kind of connections because it’s not a historical channel or something. It’s really about one person’s approach, and you have large views of the [inaudible] and also this kind of little humor style bring back to the reality.

Glasser: Was there anywhere that you couldn’t go in making the film that you tried to go?

Ai: There are many locations I couldn’t go, such as Syria, which is during the city being bombed. And I really want to go, but we couldn’t make it. You know, all the channels are really blocked. And also many politicians we want to interview we never really get an answer back.

So yeah, a film like this is, we designed a nice frame and, you know, we started with all the historical writings or literature or poetry about human flow. And it started from the beginning of the human history. But there is always, you know, regrets on something you cannot make it.

Glasser: So you’ve always been identified as an artist who is not afraid of politics and, in fact, is almost connected to politics. What do you think is the biggest political mistake that you think about these days as a result of it? Is it the threat to the internal threats to our Western democracies? Or is it external?

Ai: I think if we talk about biggest threat, it is in the past decades the West thinks about we have this democracy which guarantees our political and individual rights, and you know, a healthy society, as a result of longtime human development, you know, we come to this stage.

At the same time, the world developed very unevenly. You know, we never really see the global situation as a total situation. Today’s political leaders are still lacking of the vision. They very often just try to cope with their own election, their own popularity, solving the problem or selling the ideas to meet their own voters. By doing that, it creates a great imbalance in terms of making deals or treaty or all those things. Even today, you know, the borders they’re seeing the physical borders are very different from the political borders. Because all those powers are so connected, and you cannot even see whose interest in what move. You know, it’s very, very complicated.

And that is very dangerous because the power become much more powerful. You know, China became much more powerful one than we think there is, because they’re really capitalized; they can buy anything—you know, can own anything.

Glasser: Sorry, they became more powerful because of technology?

Ai: Because the border is not there anymore. You know. The U.S. interests very much could be China’s interests. And so the actual borders only stops the poorest people flow, but the actual border in the political landscape is completely different. You know, China bought Germany’s bank, the big, big part. You know, and those things have been accepted, you know, also, all those business deals, which every power become so profit-oriented. And that can create a tremendous uncertainty in today’s world.

Glasser: You’ve always been such a leader in speaking out for freedom of expression and freedom of speech, including in China, where it is not a guarantee. Are you worried about the role of technology now, and possibly undermining it? You know, here in America, fake news is something that concerns all of us journalists as we worry about that. What’s your view?

Ai: I think it’s a strong reason to worry about it. Not just technology but how our structure, the democratic structure or the other structure, can guarantee a certain leader or individual can carry out certain things that cannot be stopped. Because our system is designed that way, to provide that kind of possibility.

So, with such a vast scientific development or technology our global [inaudible] is kind of basically this kind of possibility of development. Our political structure still needs to be reexamined and to be adjusted to a more safe position. So we can already see the problem. You know, people start to sense the problem. Certainly this very aspect can happen and still controls our nation, and we feel powerless. Doesn’t know what to do with it.

So, I think that is or could be a good sign because that alarms people or intellectuals to really come out with some idea or vision how this democracy can really serve the people. Rather than to become misused.

Glasser: So you’re living in Berlin now. What would happen to you if you tried to go back to China?

Ai: I was promised I have freedom, so I immediately went back after I started teaching in Berlin. And then nobody touches me. But two of my lawyers have been put in jail; they’re still serving a sentence. And many of my friends are being held without trial, no lawyers can see them. So it’s a society which is so much uncertainty there. You cannot trust it. Because there’s no independent judicial system. You know, the party can manipulate it as they want.
So, its dangers are very strong for everybody if you have a voice.

Glasser: So are you a man without a country now, like some of the people--

Ai: It’s clear I am a man without country, and I don’t know until end of my life if I would find a place I can call my country.

Glasser: A lot of people here in Washington wonder whether the future holds a conflict between China and the United States as the two major powers. What do you think?

Ai: I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we’ll have competition. And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would’ve lost the ground to win.

Glasser: Do you think the Chinese people would fight the American people if they had to?

Ai: I don’t think they’d fight physically. But you know, globally, the politics, you’ll always make your friends and you’ll make your own associates, and it becomes some kind of political power. And it will exist. And today we are not out of danger of a nuclear war. You know, all those weapons are still there. And who knows when this war will be triggered. And then that will be put the end of humanity.

Glasser: You didn’t go to the border between North Korea and South Korea for this film.

Ai: No, I didn’t. Well, I visited there a long time ago once. You know, very close. But if Korean war with U.S. happened, China would become a nation to receive a lot of refugees, ironically. You know, China would be the only place that would have millions of refugees flood into it. Which it’s very possible.

Glasser: Well, that’s—we’re all watching the situation right now unfold in this amazing series of tweets and exchanges of insults.

Ai: Yes, yes. So, everything’s real. It looks like everything’s not real. But everything’s real.

Glasser: That’s a good way of putting it. Well, one of the things that’s real, as you described, your shock at finding out that Donald Trump was the president of the United States. Here you are in Washington, just a mile or so away from the White House. If you could meet President Trump, what would you tell him?

Ai: I think he should cool down a little bit. You know, to pay more attention to the history. To really understand what U.S.’s value is about. I think, as a president, those things you always have to ask.

Glasser: Ai Weiwei. His new film, which is coming out now in theaters and on Amazon, is called Human Flow. It’s something very unusual, very powerful. And we’re incredibly grateful to have him as our guest this week on The Global POLITICO. It’s really an honor to have this conversation with you, and we are so grateful that you took time out of your short visit here to Washington. Again, Ai Weiwei, thank you very much.

Ai: Thank you. Thank you so much to have me.

Glasser: Thank you.