Ai Weiwei is talking me through the decision-making process before his first visit to China in over a decade. The artist, known around the world as the most famous critic of the Chinese communist regime, had to do some fraught arithmetic before deciding to head back home.<\/p>\n
Before boarding a flight with his son, who had never met the artist\u2019s elderly mother, Ai thought back to his time in detention when his captors told him he would spend the next 13 years in custody on bogus charges<\/a>: \u201cThey said, \u2018When you come out, your son won\u2019t recognise you.\u2019 That was very heavy and really the only moment that touched me.\u201d<\/p>\n I still have a Chinese passport. My mum is still Chinese. That\u2019s my only relationship to China. I\u2019m not patriotic<\/p>\n He ended up spending several months in captivity. Lao, his son, is now 17. Ai says Lao doesn\u2019t really need his guidance any more so he decided to book their flights and roll the dice. \u201cPeople said, \u2018Are you scared?\u2019 I said, \u2018No, why should I be scared?\u2019 I\u2019m Chinese. I have a Chinese passport. I\u2019m entitled to go back and see my mum. So I went back.\u201d<\/p>\n 100m hand-painted seeds \u2026 Ai\u2019s famous Turbine Hall exhibition. Photograph: Leon Neal\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Welcome to the life of Ai Weiwei. For most people, returning home doesn\u2019t involve weighing up the risk of whether you\u2019ll see close family ever again, but that\u2019s the reality for a 68-year-old whose whole existence has been shaped by authoritarianism and the struggle against it.<\/p>\n His trip to China went well. He ended up being interviewed at the airport and released after a couple of hours into a country whose smells, sights and sounds were soothing to him. Ai described the journey as being like \u201ca phone call suddenly reconnecting<\/a>\u201d. Today, he\u2019s more poetic, describing it as \u201ca piece of jade broken that you can put back together because it matches very well. Everything\u2019s so familiar: the light, the temperature, the people.\u201d<\/p>\n Ai is meeting me in the London offices of his publisher to talk about his new book, On Censorship<\/a>, a 90-page polemic on the nature of state control, AI and surveillance. The man certainly knows about these things. Born in Beijing in 1957, he grew up in labour camps in north-west China following the exile of his father, the poet Ai Qing. In 2011, he was detained for 81 days in a 170 sq ft windowless prison because of his own activism. Upon his release, he was tracked, interrogated and threatened by the Chinese state; then his passport was returned in 2015 and he began a life in exile. He currently divides his time between Lisbon, Berlin and Cambridge.<\/p>\n I feel the same kind of surveillance and censorship in the west<\/p>\n His artworks are as dramatic as his backstory. An army of 1,600 Chinese artisans created 100m hand-painted porcelain<\/a> \u201cseeds\u201d that were scattered over the floor of Tate Modern\u2019s Turbine Hall in London 16 years ago. He cloaked Berlin\u2019s Konzerthaus in 14,000 fluorescent orange lifejackets worn by refugees; and made a film dedicated to the children who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. That direct challenge to the official state narrative made him \u201cthe most dangerous person in China<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n His upcoming work, at Aviva Studios in Manchester, involves 30 tonnes of buttons, which were saved from a London factory<\/a> that was closing down and smuggled into China to be turned into huge hanging artworks by craftspeople.<\/p>\n The book is a startling read, arguing that those in the west misunderstand the nature of censorship. He defines it as \u201cthe exercise of power over intellectual space\u201d, both \u201can indispensable tool of mental enslavement and a fundamental source of political corruption\u201d. It is not just authoritarian regimes, he warns. Liberal societies think that censorship is rare, \u201cbut people forget that even on sunny days, shadows are inevitable\u201d.<\/p>\n Worn by refugees \u2026 some of the 14,000 lifejackets that cloaked Berlin\u2019s Konzerthaus. Photograph: Kay Nietfeld\/EPA<\/p>\n Some of the arguments are perplexing. In a section about the limitations of AI, the artist refers to the selfie he took with AfD leader Alice Weidel in 2018<\/a>. He says AI decided that the image, which is real, must have been fake because the pair seemed to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum. At the time of the selfie, Weidel, whose grandfather was a Nazi<\/a>, was considered to be in the more moderate wing of the far-right party, but since becoming leader has called for \u201clarge-scale repatriations\u201d of foreigners<\/a>, saying the country\u2019s focus on the Holocaust is akin to a \u201cguilt cult<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Does Ai regret the selfie? He tells me that on many issues, her political demands \u201ccould be wrong\u201d, but she\u2019s still \u201cmore rational than other political opponents in Germany\u201d. What about her anti-immigrant rhetoric \u2013 isn\u2019t that anathema to him? \u201cSome states don\u2019t even accept one [immigrant] and Germany accepts 1.2 million, which is a pretty generous decision,\u201d he replies. \u201cSo if they change the policy and they want to limit it, then there is nothing wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s also impressed by the fact that Weidel \u201copenly wants Germany to be more independent from American influence\u201d. He adds: \u201cI think those are some of the things that we need to do.\u201d Those who know German politics would find that argument surprising because the AfD are seen as the party who are closest to Trump and nearly all parties in the country want more independence from the US. A ringing endorsement of someone at the outermost reaches of far-right European politics might cause a few double takes, and there are more surprises.<\/p>\n My position with China started before I could recognise myself as an individual. I grew up in a black hole with my father<\/p>\n Ai\u2019s attitude to China has shifted dramatically. The nation, he said recently, is \u201cin an upward phase,\u201d pointing to the technological advancements made and increased personal freedoms. The west, however, struggles to \u201csustain its own logic\u201d, has lost its \u201cethical authority\u201d and has \u201cdescended into something barely recognisable<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Although a quick glance across the Atlantic at America in the age of ICE raids does somewhat make his point, he means Europe, too. So is the Chinese regime\u2019s most famous critic now toeing the party line? \u201cMy position with China<\/a> started before I could recognise myself as an individual. I grew up in this black hole with my father,\u201d he says, pointing to a picture on his iPhone of a desolate location in north-west China.<\/p>\n He\u2019s not angry exactly, but the suggestion that he\u2019s softened on the Chinese government has touched a nerve. \u201cI still have a Chinese passport. My mum is still Chinese. So that\u2019s my only relationship to China,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not nostalgic. I\u2019m not patriotic.\u201d What about the claim that the west embraces censorship? Is that his experience in the UK? \u201cI cannot get into details,\u201d he says cryptically. \u201cBut I feel the same kind of surveillance, same kind of censorship in the west.\u201d<\/p>\n Detail \u2026 the artist at work in his Berlin studio. Photograph: Steffen Roth\/The Observer<\/p>\n Pressed for an example, he tells me a story about the Royal Academy in London, an institution that gave him a landmark exhibition in 2015<\/a> and made him an honorary member in 2011<\/a> following his detainment in China. In November 2023, an exhibition of new works to be shown at the Lisson Gallery was pulled after he posted a tweet that began: \u201cThe sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world.\u201d The tweet was deleted, with the artist telling journalists his show had \u201ceffectively [been] cancelled\u201d.<\/p>\n In the aftermath, a vote was then held at the RA to determine whether his membership should be revoked because of accusations that the post was antisemitic. \u201cI don\u2019t have the intention of an antisemite. My best friends, they\u2019re all Jewish people,\u201d says Ai. \u201cI tweeted millions of tweets on Twitter, but [how is it that] this tweet can cause such trouble? Then they said the procedure is to let the Academicians vote.\u201d<\/p>\n His peers supported him and he won the vote. Ai was then asked to write an article about freedom of speech for the RA\u2019s magazine, which he did, arguing: \u201cSpeaking the truth and insisting on one\u2019s own perspective is dangerous and may come at a heavy price. Books may go unpublished, exhibitions may be closed, concerts cancelled.\u201d<\/p>\n After he sent it, there was silence. Then he says the RA claimed they didn\u2019t have room to run the piece. For him, this is the censorship in the west, which he argues in On Censorship<\/a> can be \u201cmore covert, more deceptive and more corrosive\u201d than in authoritarian regimes. \u201cI have several cases like this,\u201d Ai adds. \u201cHappens in Britain and in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n The RA disputes this account, claiming the decision to drop the piece was made before Ai submitted it. A spokesperson added: \u201cPlurality of voices, tolerance and free thinking are at the core of what we stand for and seek to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n I wonder how Ai feels about the world in 2026. His new book paints it as a place without refuge for those who value self-expression and freedom of speech. \u201cI think today we are living in a complicated world, where life is more like a shattered mirror,\u201d he says. \u201cIt reflects the reality, but the reality can be a broken reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Did his trip to China restore his faith in humanity? There\u2019s a pause. \u201cIf we were in the time of the Tang dynasty, someone like me would go back and write beautiful poetry,\u201d he says, smiling. \u201cBut not today. I just take a few selfies.\u201d<\/p>\n