People From Beijing

": It was a couple of years ago. Before we get started-- with- we're going talk about the economy and a lot of other things--the CDC-- has identified a case of coronavirus-- in Washington state. The strain of this. If you remember , that affected GDP. Travel-related effects. Do you-- have you been briefed by the CDC? And--"

"In September 2018, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro visited China, where he met with China’s President Xi Jinping and signed a series of important agreements on trade and culture. Toward the end of his stay, Maduro said that the two countries had built “a relationship of mutual benefit, of shared gain.” Among these agreements was one that highlights the depth of the collaboration: this was for China to participate with the Great Venezuela Housing Mission (GMVV) to build more than 13,000 homes in the El Valle parish in Caracas. The focus of the international media has been on the oil trade between China and Venezuela, and in the aid from China to Venezuela; but the connections go deeper, into the social life of the people who are struggling to emerge from deprivation... China, Arreaza (foreign minister of Venezuela) says, trades with countries without interference in their internal affairs. This is quite different from the Western model, notably that overseen by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which pushes for structural adjustment alongside loans. Because China respects the sovereign choices of a country, Arreaza told me, “China has proven to be a reliable partner for the region and it can continue to play a key role in our development for many years to come.”"

"According to [[Mike Pompeo|Pompeo [U.S. Secretary of State] ]], CCP general secretary Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) harbor a “decades-long desire for global hegemony.” This is ironic. Only one country – the US – has a defense strategy calling for it to be the “preeminent military power in the world,” with “favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and the Western Hemisphere.” China’s defense white paper, by contrast, states that “China will never follow the beaten track of big powers in seeking hegemony,” and that, “As economic globalization, the information society, and cultural diversification develop in an increasingly multi-polar world, peace, development, and win-win cooperation remain the irreversible trends of the times.” US military spending totaled $732 billion in 2019, nearly three times the $261 billion China spent. The US.. has around 800 overseas military bases, while China has just one (a small naval base in Djibouti)."

"Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!"

"China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!"

"Xi Jinping is quite self-confident. If you listen to him, it’s clear that he believes that authoritarianism is the way forward. He’s expressing that in Hong Kong, with threats against the Uyghur population, and with threats toward Taiwan."

"There is nothing new in Xi’s claim that there is no universal notion of [civil] rights; that each country has the right to define “[civil] rights” as it sees fit; and that the West pretends to impose under the false idea of “universal” [civil] rights its own bourgeois notion of these rights."

"Thank you very much Mr President (Xi Jinping) for such a warm and friendly welcome. I am delighted to meet you again. I have wonderful memories of my first visit to China, seven years ago, and of your visit to Italy five years ago. I am still grateful to you for visiting my Region, Sicily. I considered it a gesture of friendship for which I am grateful to you. When we met in Rome you asked me to return to China in the year we celebrated 50 years of diplomatic relations. Unfortunately what happened later with the pandemic, with the suffering we all suffered, prevented us from doing so. But since friendship is also about remembrance, it is about keeping commitments and keeping promises, I am happy to be here again in China to reaffirm our friendship, our desire for growing cooperation."

"The [Regulations on the Ideological and Political Work of the Communist Party of China] are a reminder that in Xi’s China, thought is not free—it’s curated, measured, and mandatory. And while the language is wrapped in bureaucratic velvet, the message is steel: think as the Party thinks, or don’t think at all."

"Had the foreign legations being subjected to the full force of bombardment, would those buildings still be intact today? (Original Chinese:設使火轟水灌，豈能一律保全？)"

"Beautiful, cunning and cruel, Empress Dowager Cixi was the archetypal ‘dragon lady’. She rose from obscurity to become the effective ruler of China for 47 years, during which time she presided over a humiliating decline in the country’s fortunes. In the second half of the 19th century, the Qing dynasty that had ruled China for more than 250 years struggled to cope with the challenges posed by modernization and increasing pressure from the European powers. Having suffered military defeats at the hands of its foreign rivals, and faced with growing internal unrest, China’s last imperial dynasty finally fell in 1911. No one had contributed more to this collapse than the empress dowager herself."

""寧贈友邦,不與家奴." or 宁予於外盗, 不予於家贼. (We would rather give our state to "neighboring friends" (foreigners), not to our household slaves ̈(Han Chinese).)"

"I have often thought that i am the most clever woman that ever lived, and others cannot compare with me.... Although I have heard much about Queen Victoria...I don't think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine.... she had... really nothing to say about the policy of the country. Now look at me. I have 400,000,000 people dependent on my judgement."

"（一）生而父为中国人者。（二）生於父死后而父死时为中国人者。（三）母为中国人而父无可考或 无国籍者第二 条，若父母均无可考或均无国籍而生於中国地方者亦属中国国籍。其生地并无可考而在中国地方发现 之弃童同。第 二章 入籍。第三条，凡外国人具备左列各款愿入中国国籍者准其呈请入籍"

"曾令其将忠君爱国合为一事，勿徒欲保中国四万万人而置我大清国於度外，康有为亦似悔之"

"Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?"

"Perhaps their magic is not to be relied upon; but can we not rely on the hearts and minds of the people? Today China is extremely weak. We have only the people's hearts and minds to depend upon. If we cast them aside and lose the people's hearts, what can we use to sustain the country? (original quote in Chinese: 法術不足恃，豈人心亦不足恃乎？今日中國積弱已極，所仗者人心耳，若並人心而失之，何以立國?)"

"Your tail, is becoming too heavy to wag."

"I cannot ever accept the kind of conditions where you can sacrifice someone’s rights."

"To express yourself needs a reason, but expressing yourself is the reason."

"I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries."

"They [the government] really want to maintain power. At the same time, they refuse to communicate. They refuse to have good intentions. They refuse to be sincere. How can that last?"

"We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?'"

"Later I became very involved in writing. I really enjoyed that moment of writing. People would pass around my sentences. That was a feeling I never had before. It was like a bullet out of the gun."

"In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want—not only you, your whole family and all people like you."

"Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention."

"The biggest crime of a dictatorship is to eradicate human feelings from people."

"Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources."

"I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless."

"Very few people know why art sells so high. I don’t even know."

"The individual under this kind of life, with no rights, has absolutely no power in this land. How can they even ask you for creativity? Or imagination, or courage or passion?"

"My current situation is, I always want to find a new possibility. China is in a changing stage, and that puts me in a very difficult situation, because anytime a new condition is announced there is a lot of struggle between the new and the old. So the establishment really becomes extremely nervous because they are refusing to meet very basic human rights or values. I don’t know how long I can still struggle in China, but I will try my best. Because this is a land I am very familiar with, and we have been in the same kind of struggle for generations. I think it’s a time for change.""

"I think the government [will] lose the battle. Because for a nation to develop, the government needs to correct the information, they need to have a space for people to be involved, to discuss, to participate in the change. Otherwise, I don’t think they can really last in this kind of development, because economically it goes so fast but politically it stays the same as many, many years ago. I think even the government senses that this is impossible."

"The government computer has one button: delete."

"The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay."

"[My family] suffer so much. My mother was much older when I came out [of detention]. She had problems with her hearing and high blood pressure. But they still support me. When you make somebody disappear and you don’t announce it to the family, what is this? You make people desperate and bring them close to death. If our cat or dog is lost, it makes us desperately want to know where it is—so for humans disappearing, you can barely imagine the pain. What kind of society is this? If a society cannot even support somebody like me, then people ask: Who is under protection, then? That’s why there is such support for me. It is not because I am so beautiful or so charming. People feel, This guy is fighting for us."

"They know too many things they should not know and they do not know some things they need to know."

"Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility."

"Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it."

"I don’t want the next generation to fight the same fight as I did."

"A fine line separates Chinese intellectuals and professors from the political gangsters who protect them."

"Once you’ve tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country."

"You know, if they can do this to me they can do this to anybody, and they have been doing this for over sixty years . . . . it’s a very strange world."

"I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself."

"I have the responsibility to let the people know what happened to me, and did I commit the crime or if I didn’t, what is the real accusation? Why am I in this condition today? I think it reflects our human condition in this piece of land, and if I don’t bear some responsibility . . . . many, many people, their voice can never be heard."

"The frustration mainly comes from trying to understand what they really want. Also, you cannot understand how can such a large nation maintain its so-called stability by doing something very unlawful. I mean, how can they possibly manage to stabilize the whole social condition by not [acting with] justice and fairness."

"It’s really life and death [not art].When they tell you your mother is 80 years old but you cannot see her again, you can never call it performance art. Or when your son is three, and they tell you that when you are released he will be in his teens and can never recognize you as a father. You feel terrible inside, to lose those chances. Each day, they tell you, 'You will spend your life day after day the same, minute after minute the same. You just have to pay [with] your life for this kind of so-called freedom that you are fighting for.' There is no sense of justice there. Why do I have to do this with them? Why do I have to argue or play this game?""

"Creativity is part of human nature. It can only be untaught."

"I feel powerless all the time, but I regain my energy by making a very small difference that won’t cost me much."

"I see myself not as a leader but as somebody who initiates things or finds the problem or provokes a discussion. You have to be always ready to engage, willing to participate. When events or history happen, you just have to be aware and respond."