“What do you think of dissidents realizing China is freer than the West?”, one Redditor asked today (reddit.com/r/AskAChines…). “Ai Wei Wei returns to China after being defeated by democracy”, another post title said. On X, one post by Arnaud Bertrand, which has now been reposted over 3000 times, described Ai Weiwei’s recent China visit and consecutive interviews as “extraordinary and profoundly symbolic”, writing: “The man once celebrated throughout the West as the very embodiment of opposition to his country has now concluded that it is in fact Europe that's inhumane and "unfree"” (x.com/RnaudBertrand/sta…).  

The idea of the famous dissident returning to the China he fled from, only to find a place that is more “humane” than “unfree” Europe, is really stirring up some discussion – all in the light of Ai’s own negative comments on Europe and surprisingly positive portrayal of China.

But reading the Berliner Zeitung interview (berliner-zeitung.de/kul…), I didn’t see Ai Weiwei’s words and experiences as a political verdict on “China vs. West,” nor as the activist making a U-turn on his China stance. Instead, his comments on Europe and China fit perfectly into Ai Weiwei’s life’s work as a perpetual contrarian and self-described “troublemaker.” 

- Ai Weiwei was back in China from Dec 12-Jan 2 for a private family visit. He left China in 2015 after years of house arrest, detention, and harassment. Reuniting with his 93-year-old mother together with his teenage son, he described Beijing as feeling like “a broken piece of jade being perfectly reassembled” - a familiar homecoming many people experience after a long absence, when the air, the faces, and the sense of things click back into place. It’s not a claim about the city per se, which has also changed significantly over the past decade (incl the “Great Brickening” and the demolition of Ai’s own studio).

- A positive change he noted is the improved service quality in Beijing.

From banking to buying tailored clothes, he found that things are easy to do. By contrast, he describes bureaucratic processes in Germany as nightmarish, from bank issues to delays in visa applications.

-When he speaks of the “political climate,” he says that “daily life for ordinary people in Beijing feels more natural and more human because people tend to focus on what is directly in front of them,” adding his appreciation of China’s deeply ingrained Confucian traditions and its understanding of human relationships. This is not a comment on state power, dissent, or freedom/repression, but on social behavior and cultural roots; here, “political climate” is used to describe social atmosphere.

- When he refers to Germany as “an insecure and unfree country struggling to find its position between history and the future,” Ai Weiwei is responding to a question about Germany’s image in China, not necessarily offering a personal verdict on Germany (even if his personal view may overlap).

Nowhere does Ai Weiwei claim that Europe is politically “unfree” in this interview, nor that China is politically “free”. He does talk about ‘freedom’, explicitly and implicitly, but it’s social freedom. In Germany, he was legally free but socially isolated. In China, he was politically constrained but socially connected.

That tension is precisely what makes Ai Weiwei interesting, as a person and as an artist. He’s definitely not a witness for the defense of China - he is one of the most outspoken critics of censorship and political power of his time.

He criticizes China, the country he loves; he criticizes Germany, the country that supported him; he criticizes the US, where he was educated, he criticizes Europe, where he now lives; and he even criticizes money, which he has plenty of.

Ai Weiwei’s work makes us question the constructions of power around us. Framing his emotional connection to China and his criticism of Germany’s social coldness as a "China vs. West" victory narrative would miss that point entirely.