This was in the US news media for about five minutes, but the arrest of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei this month is a tragedy on many levels.
The photo above of Ai holding sunflower seeds, part of an installation that he did.
He also has done more provocative work, such as a photo of him giving Tienenmen square the finger. He is a harsh critic of the Chinese government. He is dangerous.
I have strong feelings about this as should we all.
China should be concerned that it is forcing out or silencing it's creative peoples. The large scale production of poorly made, inexpensive products with little emphasis on quality is a sure sign of this. China exports millions of products, but they have very little creative influence in the world.
The little that they do have is potentially crushed.
Hey China, listen up. Do yourself a favor and drop this totalitarian bullshit before it is too late. See what is happening in the Middle East? You think you can keep people under control, but your control is self defeating. Each incident like this puts you more in the Bad Guy role.
Modify your outmoded government to allow personal freedom and creativity. Dare I say "Democracy"? Ok, baby steps...
but let Mr. Weiwei go!
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/ai_weiwei/index.html
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