China Cultural Year in Germany: Prepared to Die for Ai Weiwei? (wordpress blog)

http://justrecently.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/china-cultural-year-in... 

China Cultural Year in Germany: Prepared to Die for Ai Weiwei?

1) Excerpts from an article on the Chinese Cultural Year 2012 in Germany, by green-leaning tageszeitung (taz), published on February 2

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About 1,500 artists from the People’s Republic will introduce themselves all over the Federal Republic in 2012, to provide Germans with opportunities to experience China’s culture, “in a modern and updated way”, as the organizers say.

“More than 500 events” have been announced by Wu Hongbo, China’s ambassador in Berlin. Their motto is “Chinah”, a combination of “China” and “nearby”, under the auspices of Chinese state and party chairman Hu Jintao and federal president Christian Wulff, and partly paid by the Chinese ministry of culture.

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This has led to criticism already. “Culture needs freedom”, members of Amnesty International and Tibet activists shouted during a demonstration in Berlin. The cultural year must not become a propaganda event “behind whose facade, the freedom of culture and freedom of opinion are impassively suppressed”, as had been in Liu Xiaobo’s case, who had been sentenced to eleven years in prison, or in the case of the Tibetan documentary filmer Dhondup Wangchen.

Peking artist and dissident Ai Weiwei isn’t likely to be there either. Fan Dian, the Peking art museum’s director, defends this: Ai Weiwei was known in Germany anyway. Now, it was tried to “give other artists an opportunity”.

Michael Kahn-Ackermann, once head of the Goethe Institute in Peking, and advisor to the Chinese culture ministry now, counts on “dialog”. He hoped that “people listen and look closely first, before stating firm opinions”, he says. It would be wrong “to bedevil every Chinese artist with questions about his political views – and if he’s prepared to die for Ai Weiwei”.

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Peking has invested millions into Confucius Institutes and Chinese television broadcasters to influence China’s image abroad positively. But experts and artists see that as futile, as long as the government also tries to suppress sensitive topics through censorship and intimidation

On the other side of high politics, Germans and Chinese have cooperated for years. Hundreds of artists from both countries experience everyday life in each others’ countries [states]. In German galleries, contemporary Chinese painters’ paintings can be found, dancers attend ballets, and students call on master classes.

Peking sculptor Wang Shugang, who lived in Germany for ten years, doesn’t believe in the “Chinese Cultural Year 2012″. That was “a mere waste of money”, the 51-year-old says. “If people in Germany want to know something about Chinese culture, he can inform himself anyway. That takes no events that are organized from the top”.