In reality, he was born on May 18, 1957. “My birthday was registered on the wrong day because my parents didn’t get their marriage certificate when my mother was pregnant with me,” Ai Weiwei told the German Press Agency. “Otherwise I would have been seen as an illegitimate child and become the target of discrimination.”
Fulfilled, he looks at his life in Portugal today. For two years he has owned a secluded finca in the countryside about a hundred kilometers east of Lisbon. “Portuguese life is slow and there isn’t much of the competition, arrogance or discrimination commonly seen in modern society.” He misses China but left because he didn’t want his son to “go through what I did.”
exploitation by the West
Ai Weiwei is concerned about the intensified persecution in his home country under head of state and party leader Xi Jinping, but sees a pattern. Since the time before the People’s Republic was founded, there have been around 50 political movements and campaigns in the Communist Party. “Every political movement led to a political hardening of society.” Was the West naïve to believe in “change through trade”? “Since the beginning of globalization, the West has honeymooned with China for almost three decades. In these three decades, the West has again exploited and plundered those poor, backward and authoritarian societies through globalization.” It was only an “excuse” to state that China would become democratic with increasing prosperity. “I think the West never wanted China to be really strong or democratic.”
Source: Nachrichten
