Skip to footer

Chen Guangchen to Ai Weiwei: 6 famous dissidents in China

The surprising escape of a blind legal activist from house arrest is buoying China's embattled dissident community, even as the government cracks down on those who helped him.

2. Ai Weiwei

David Gray/Reuters
Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei walks out of his studio in Beijing, in this November 15, 2011 file photo.

Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist, is internationally renowned for his artwork and his public criticism of the Chinese government. He was detained with no charge on April 3, 2011, by Chinese authorities, and wasn’t seen or heard of for almost three months. Then he was suddenly released on bail June 22, 2011, because of his “good attitude in confessing,” according to Chinese state media. 

When Ai was released on bail, the government said he would remain under investigation on suspicion of unspecified economic crimes.

Mr. Ai was one of the designers of the Bird’s Nest stadium of Beijing Olympics fame and has exhibited his artwork, often laden with political messages, around the world.

One of his most iconic works is the collection of children’s backpacks he put on display in Munich following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The backpacks were arranged to spell out, “She lived happily for seven years in the world,” a quote from a mother whose child died when her school collapsed during the earthquake. He also helped lead an investigation into the collapses of the government-built schools in which thousands of children died, to China's chagrin.

Today he is fighting tax evasion charges and under home watch in Beijing.

2 of 6
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.