Ai Weiwei, the Chinese dissident whose activist art has made him Beijing's best-known critic, said that the recent wave of protests in his homeland would not shake Xi Jinping's government because the police would simply crush them into silence
Nearly three years into the pandemic, China says its policies are not geared toward having zero cases at all times but are about "dynamically" taking action when cases surface.
"There's no clear political agenda so it's very easy to just arrest them and move on," Ai told Reuters on Monday, adding there were more "demands" in 1989 when a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Asked who could lead the protest movement, Ai, who spent 81 days in detention in China in 2011, said nobody could because the country does not have a "political environment".Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei poses for a picture after an interview with Reuters in Montemor-O-Novo, Portugal, November, 28, 2022.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a regular briefing on Monday that China was not aware of any protests abroad calling for an end to its COVID policy.
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