{"id":1682,"date":"2014-06-20T18:02:02","date_gmt":"2014-06-20T18:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=1682"},"modified":"2014-06-20T18:02:19","modified_gmt":"2014-06-20T18:02:19","slug":"an-exclusive-essay-by-ai-weiwei-on-self-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/an-exclusive-essay-by-ai-weiwei-on-self-censorship","title":{"rendered":"An Exclusive Essay By Ai Weiwei: &#8216;On Self-Censorship&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #444444;line-height: 1.7\">Posted: 06\/19\/2014 9:14 am EDT Updated: 06\/19\/2014 10:59 am EDT<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/i0.huffpost.com\/gen\/1863575\/thumbs\/n-AI-WEIWEI-SELF-CENSORSHIP-large570.jpg\" width=\"570\" height=\"238\" \/><\/p>\n<p>AI WEIWEI SELF CENSORSHIP<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a bad month for critics of the Chinese government, starting with the flood of arrests ahead of the Tiananmen Square anniversary. Now officials are battling a single man: their longtime opponent, the world-famous artist Ai Weiwei.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>This month, Ai withdrew his work from a show at Beijing&#8217;s influential Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, a tribute to the late scholar Hans Van Dijk, with whom he worked closely. It was a move made in protest: In a series of correspondences that surfaced online, UCCA chief Xue Mei admitted to removing Ai&#8217;s name from a press release, bowing to pressure from the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The incident follows a similar one this spring, when Ai&#8217;s name and work were &#8220;wiped&#8221; from a retrospective in Shanghai to placate the government.<\/p>\n<p>In an email to the Huffington Post, Ai analyzed the culture of &#8220;self-censorship&#8221; at play in China&#8217;s art world, drawing a line between the government&#8217;s actions and an old Chinese saying, which translates to &#8220;killing the chicken to scare the monkey.&#8221; The essay is reprinted in full below.<br \/>\nFrom:http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/06\/19\/ai-weiwei-self-censorship-ullens_n_5509225.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted: 06\/19\/2014 9:14 am EDT Updated:  &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/an-exclusive-essay-by-ai-weiwei-on-self-censorship\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[57,37,1343],"views":1059,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1682"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1684,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1682\/revisions\/1684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}