As Xi Jinping prepared for his visit to the US one of China’s best-known artists was opening a major new show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Ai Weiwei plays with the idea of the artist as joker and prankster mixed with a visceral distaste for the Chinese state. Two of the most impressive installations in London explore the corruption in the construction industry revealed by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and re-enact his period in prison in 2011.
I doubt Xi thinks much about Ai even though Ai’s fight against corruption plays to one of Xi’s personal priorities. But he might ponder on how Beijing’s promotion of soft power copes with its exclusion of the world’s most famous Chinese artist.
The treatment of Ai springs from the same Chinese attitude that also mishandled last summer’s stock market wobbles, and Xi and premier Li Keqiang certainly paid attention to that.