worship the glitch
This is Eric Mortensen's blog. He works @ Blip and lives in Brooklyn.
Video: Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern, London
Text: Ai Weiwei, Diplomacy, and Freedom
One of the most enduring issues in activist and diplomatic circles is whether public pressure on the Chinese government helps or hurts those who have been arrested. This case will be studied for a long time because Ai’s detention became politically expensive on a scale rarely seen. Artists and museums around the world had called for his release—Anish Kapoor, one of the most vocal, remained cautious after news of the release, saying, “While I am thankful that he has been released, I do not think that artists should present their work in China until the situation has been resolved.” A petition had attracted more than a hundred and forty thousand signatures, as well as an attack by hackers, which the hosts of the petition suspected originated in China. My early sense is that, to oversimplify it for the moment, the public pressure was effective, but the outcome must also be read in terms of Chinese diplomatic calculations. Ai was released a few days before Cui Tiankai, the vice foreign minister, heads to Hawaii to meet with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, and Wen Jiabao is preparing to go to Germany and elsewhere in Europe. (Angela Merkel applauded the news of Ai’s release, but also said it was only a “first step” in clearing up the case.)
The largest outstanding question is what will become of Ai’s far lesser-known friends and associates who disappeared when he did, without the benefit of an international campaign. Among them are Wen Tao, a former journalist who supported Ai’s work, and other people with connection to Ai’s office staff—Hu Mingfen, Liu Zhenggang, and Zhang Jinsong. To date, they remain unaccounted for.
China is a porcine superpower as well as a human one. The Middle Kingdom boasts more than 446 million pigs — one for every three Chinese people and more than the next 43 countries combined. So when there’s a major disruption in the pork supply it hits the economy hard; the “blue-ear pig” disease that forced Chinese farmers to slaughter millions of pigs in 2008, for example, drove the country’s inflation rate to its highest level in a decade.
To prevent further disruptions, the Chinese government established a strategic pork reserve shortly afterward, keeping icy warehouses around the country stocked with frozen pork that can be released during times of shortage. The government was forced to add to the reserve — taking pigs off the market — in the spring of 2010 when a glut led to prices collapsing.
STRATFOR’s China Director Jennifer Richmond discusses how the timing of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s arrest illustrates a change in the Chinese government’s behavior — as well as in increased foreign scrutiny — even at the expense of damaging its public image.
Though it’s nearly impossible to characterize how the world’s largest population of Internet users feels about a particular event, even a brief, afternoon trawl through the comments left on the country’s vibrant and chaotic forums shows two most predictable strains: first, a strain of tender sympathy that was so movingly expressed in the aftermath of 2008’s devastating Wenchuan earthquake (often appended with a call to “pray for Japan”); second, a darker, celebratory strain frequently invoking variations of the phrase “Warmly welcome the Japanese earthquake.” To an extent, both of these reactions are quite predictable, especially — in the last case — considering the deep ambivalence toward Japan felt at all levels of Chinese society.
Stratfor’s China Director Jennifer Richmond analyzes Beijing’s increasing inflation concerns and possible repercussions for the government.
Great Chinese State Circus performs Swan Lake
(via inreallife:paperplate:unicornflakes)
Remarkable. Some of this stuff seems like it should be impossible.
