Chinese government afraid of artist Ai Weiwei

Last week I watched the Frontline story “Who’s Afraid of Ai Weiwei?”* about the outspoken artist whose blog was taken down by the Chinese government and who bravely captured his arrest and beating on his cell phone.

[Source] © 2009 Ai Weiwei

Earlier this week, Ai was arrested again and continues to be held incommunicado, his whereabouts unknown.

On April 6, in what can be read as the first official acknowledgment of Ai's arrest, a newspaper article in the state-run Global Times announced that Ai would "pay a price" for being an activist and that "the law would not concede" to his criticisms of the government.

The artist currently has a show at the Tate Modern in London. Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009, a book based on his blog posts (seems hard to resist a book with “digital rants” in the title), has just come out.



*I can’t embed it, but you can watch the entire program at that link.