China In Eurasia

The Beijing Winter Olympics have been shrouded in controversy, with many saying China is a problematic host for such an event due to its rising authoritarianism and poor human rights record.

One of the loudest critics of China hosting the games is a famous Chinese artist and dissident living in Australia known only by the pseudonym Badiucao, whose new series of art and videos recreate images of Olympic sporting events that double as depictions of Chinese government abuse.

At first glance, they appear to be promotional billboards for the Beijing Olympics, but a closer look reveals why Badiucao and many others see China as an unfit host: a Chinese hockey player bloodying a Tibetan monk; a snowboarder atop a surveillance camera; a Chinese biathlete poised to execute a member of the country’s persecuted Uyghur minority; and a curler sending a coronavirus cell down the ice, representing China's delay in warning the world about the outbreak of COVID-19.

For the 35-year-old Badiucao, the guerrilla art campaign -- which has gained a global following -- is a chance to push back against Beijing as it uses the global sporting event to try to put a polish on Western criticism about its human rights record and spread a narrative that the Chinese Communist Party has built an inclusive and prosperous political model at home.

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“As an artist, it’s my job to do something that channels this attention on China towards the conversation that the world should be hearing and what the government is trying to hide,” Badiucao told RFE/RL. “This is obviously not what the Chinese government wants to tell the world and would instead prefer to push this idea that everything is fine and everyone is happy.”

Badiucao is no stranger to courting controversy and using his art to provoke a conversation, with over a decade of work lambasting the Chinese government and the country’s president, Xi Jinping, in particular. His work as a political cartoonist has also taken aim at Chinese censorship at home and increasingly around the world -- with Western complicity -- as well as Beijing’s crackdown on activists in Hong Kong.

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He’s also increasingly focused on the brutal dragnet that has swept more than 1 million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities into detention camps and prisons in China’s western Xinjiang Province. The actions of Chinese authorities -- who have been accused of using forced birth control, indentured labor, and erasing Uyghur cultural and religious identity -- have drawn accusations of genocide from international rights groups and several Western governments.

Beijing has repeatedly denied the genocide allegations, saying the camps were established to fight extremism. Chinese authorities have also rigorously pushed back at criticism over its actions in Xinjiang and continue to do so at the Olympics.

During the opening ceremony in Beijing, Dinigar Ilhamjan, a Uyghur Olympic athlete, was selected to light the flame in the main stadium, which the country’s state-run media outlets quickly held up as evidence that Beijing is not persecuting Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.

“This is propaganda. There’s no other way to describe it,” Badiucao said. “This is exactly what [China] wants to use the Olympics for. They want to show the world that everyone has a smile on their face and that all these reports and evidence about what is happening in Xinjiang are not actually true.”

Art Vs. Censorship

In China, censorship has long been a reality for the country’s cultural sphere, and the already-narrow space for free expression has only continued to shrink since Xi’s rise to leadership in 2012. Inside the country, it has become increasingly common for works and even entire art shows -- whether political or not -- to be pulled at the request of Chinese authorities.

This has also grown beyond its borders in recent years, as China's vast censorship system -- fueled by its mounting economic strength and political influence -- has successfully extended its reach to other countries around the world.

Badiucao, who is routinely attacked by Chinese state-media outlets, knows this firsthand.

His art show in Brescia, Italy, in November 2021 almost didn’t happen following direct requests and even threats from Chinese officials to cancel the exhibit.

“I wear these attempts at censorship as a badge of honor,” he said.

The show in Italy contained many provocative works touching on topics that are taboo or even illegal inside China, such as a hybrid portrait of Xi and Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam; a display commenting on the brutal Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989; and a series of cartoons poking fun at a popular Internet meme of Xi and U.S. President Barack Obama that compared the Chinese leader to the Disney cartoon character Winnie-the-Pooh.

The image, which also showed Obama as his companion character Tigger, was quickly censored when it first appeared, with any version or mention of the meme scrubbed from the Chinese Internet.

“I see art as a way to start a conversation,” said Badiucao. “It can be a way to challenge people and provoke them to pay attention to things that matter.”

Badiucao had worked for years to keep his identity a secret out of fear of reprisal from the Chinese government and preferred to remain completely anonymous.

But in October 2018, just weeks before his first exhibit in Hong Kong was set to open, his life was turned upside down when Chinese officials uncovered his identity and his family members were detained and interrogated because of his activism.

The Hong Kong show was canceled and Badiucao said he has since cut off contact with family in China in order to protect them. He’s also slowly come out of the shadows, revealing his face for the first time in a 2019 documentary and since taking on a more public role despite the growing pushback form Chinese authorities to his work.

“The resistance from the Chinese authorities can be felt stronger than before,” Badiucao said. “The censorship and threats I receive are getting worse every day. I’m getting death threats sent to me and I still have a hard time getting [my work] into galleries [due to Chinese intervention].”

Drawing Truth To Power

The poster campaign centered around the Olympics has grown into an organic global effort, with fans downloading the posters and having them printed for public posting. They have been seen all around the world, from Miami Beach to Prague and Melbourne.

But the grassroots effort has stirred controversy of its own, most notably at a major American university in February.

Students had put up the posters highlighting Beijing’s human rights abuses on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., but they were later removed by the university following a complaint by the local chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations (CSSA), a global organization that is sponsored and monitored by the local Chinese embassy or consulate in its host country.

Leaked e-mails obtained by the U.S. media outlet Axios show that the CSSA complained directly to university President Mark Wrighton, calling the posters an “attack on the Chinese nation” and that they included “serious racist views.”

Wrighton initially sided with the CSSA, saying he was personally offended by the posters, and ordered them to be removed. Following a public uproar, Wrighton backtracked and issued a public statement admitting he was wrong to remove the posters, which he said were not targeted toward the Chinese people but the government’s human rights record.

For Badiucao, the episode was a frustrating, but familiar, incident. He said that accusations of racism to deflect criticism over the government’s human rights abuses is a common tactic that proves to be largely effective.

“This is part of a global playbook to censor people,” Badiucao said. “Chinese authorities are always trying to show that the Chinese people and the government are the same thing and that criticizing the government is the same as attacking its people.”

Despite lingering frustrations over how the incident was first handled by Wrighton, Badiucao said he is “cautiously positive” about the space for his work and how it is having an impact in shifting the conversation about the Chinese government.

In the West in particular, many governments and corporations continue to stay silent when it comes to abuses like those targeted against Uyghurs or the crackdown under way in Hong Kong in order to avoid backlash from Beijing and maintain access to China’s lucrative financial market.

Badiucao hopes that campaigns like the Olympic posters can play a small part in changing the way the world sees the Chinese government.

“Unlike politicians or corporations, [artists] are not blinded by agenda or short-term profit,” Badiucao said. “Art is a great way to tell the truth about China to people of all backgrounds and do it in a way that is still interesting and enlightening.”

After not holding in-person meetings with foreign leaders for two years due to the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping engaged in a flurry of face-to-face diplomacy on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics as China looked to project its rising global status.

Despite a “diplomatic boycott” from many Western nations over Chinese human rights abuses, 22 world leaders attended the open ceremony in Beijing on February 4.

Many represented autocratic nations, with leaders from Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan sending leaders to meet with Xi, along with delegations from other nondemocratic countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Serbia also went to Beijing.

For visiting dignitaries, the diplomatic possibilities on the sidelines of the Olympics were a rare opportunity to meet face-to-face with Xi and other senior Chinese officials, with many arriving with high-level delegations to try and invigorate relations with China and kick-start various initiatives derailed due to the pandemic.

The most high-profile meeting came in the form of a summit between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in a choreographed showing of solidarity between the two leaders amid Moscow’s tensions with Ukraine that threaten turning into a war.

Beijing and Moscow announced a new gas deal, with the Kremlin promising to increase its exports at a time when Putin is at odds with European customers. In a joint statement after they met, the two leaders said their friendship had “no limits,” and China sided with Russia on its security demand that NATO put a moratorium on an eastward expansion.

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The meeting with Putin concluded shortly before the Olympics’ opening ceremony in Beijing's National Stadium, and both events amounted to a display of China’s newfound place in the world as it looks to shore up its own partnerships, win over countries, and push back against what Chinese officials view as Western pressure to impede its rise.

“Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions,” Putin and Xi said in the 5,300-word joint statement.

Seeking Face Time

While Putin and Xi put warming ties between China and Russia on display, no other region in the world was better represented diplomatically at the opening ceremony than Central Asia, with its five presidents eager to boost ties with China, the region’s main source of trade and investment.

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Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev met with Xi for the first time since unrest rocked the country in January and the Chinese leader said ties between the two countries had “reached beyond the boundary of bilateral relations.”

But perhaps the Central Asian leader with the most on the line was Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, who was keen to make progress on the long-stalled China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway.

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During a January 25 virtual summit between the five Central Asian leaders and Xi, Japarov said the railway could be “a flagship project of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),” Beijing’s global foreign policy venture, and that he was heading to Beijing with new contracts and a financing plan, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reported.

Japarov, however, failed to gain traction for the railway during his February 6 meeting with Xi despite Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev also pushing the project during his talks with the Chinese leader.

According to the Chinese readout of their meeting, Beijing asked that Kyrgyzstan first improve the country’s business climate before it green-lighted the project.

Besides the railway, Japarov also discussed other investment and cooperation possibilities, even proposing that Kyrgyzstan could begin to export electricity to western China.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov both came to Beijing with more modest expectations and neither left totally empty-handed.

Berdymukhammedov, who went to Beijing despite Turkmenistan not sending any athletes to the Olympics, gave a rare interview to China's state-run CCTV news agency in which he praised Xi’s leadership, discussed Ashgabat’s neutrality, and reaffirmed Turkmenistan’s adherence to the One China policy, which does not recognize Taiwan’s status as an independent entity from mainland China.

While the Turkmen leader left with few deliverables, he also raised a long-delayed project of his own: a new natural gas pipeline to transport more gas across Central Asia to China known as Line D.

While Turkmenistan is eager to increase its exports, many analysts contend the project is unlikely to gain momentum in the next decade when a substantial increase in Chinese demand is predicted.

In addition to requisite face time and a photo op with Xi, Rahmon also inked a joint economic and trade cooperation plan with China through 2025 during his February 5 meeting.

'Ironclad'

The chance to meet with Xi in person was also an important opportunity for two leaders close to Beijing that were eager to breathe new life into their established partnerships with China: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Vucic met with Xi on February 5, with the leaders referring to their country’s relations as an “ironclad” friendship, a level of rhetoric that Beijing reserves only for its closest partners.

Under Vucic, Serbia has steadily deepened its ties with China in trade, technology, and defense. While the partnership has changed quickly, Belgrade also maintains a foreign policy that looks to balance its relations with Beijing off the European Union, Russia, and the United States.

The Serbian president appeared to strengthen his hand during the trip to China, leaving with an array of economic and political deals, such as a fast-tracked, free-trade agreement, new investments, and the introduction of direct flights from Belgrade to Shanghai and Beijing.

Khan was also looking to reaffirm Pakistan's “all-weather” friendship with China during his February 6 meeting with Xi.

Beijing and Islamabad have a storied relationship and Pakistan has been one of China’s most enthusiastic partners on the BRI, with the $62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project becoming a centerpiece of the massive infrastructure initiative.

But the CPEC’s progress has been patchy for several years and the combination of the pandemic and a series of attacks on Chinese workers across Pakistan in the summer of 2021 have slowed things down further and become a sore spot in relations between Beijing and Islamabad, despite their rosy public rhetoric.

Khan left Beijing without any new agreements and instead used his visit to discuss his country’s long-standing ties with China.

“Pakistan and China not only see each other as iron brothers,” Khan told China’s state-run Global Times during a February 5 interview, “but they also think that the China and Pakistan relationship is as high as the Himalayas.”