• Artist Ai Weiwei returned to his native China after 10 years in exile.
• Ai has lived in Europe since 2015, when he fled China following four years under house arrest.
• His return raises questions about China’s evolving approach to dissent and international scrutiny.

The Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei quietly returned to China last month, after spending a decade in exile in Europe. The unexpected three-week trip to Beijing was Ai’s first visit since authorities returned his confiscated passport in 2015, allowing him to start a new life abroad.

Best known internationally for his outspoken opposition to the Chinese government and his art addressing state violence, censorship, and human rights, Ai has lived in Germany, the U.K., and Portugal since leaving China in 2015. His re-entry to his home country, including a brief airport interrogation but no further interference, has raised questions about how Chinese authorities now calculate the risks of confronting one of their most famous cultural critics—and what space, if any, remains for dissent.

Ai took to Instagram to share several photographs and videos from his three-week stay in Beijing, which was partly motivated by a desire for his 17-year-old son and 93-year-old mother to meet. In some videos with no audio, groups of friends and family appear relaxed as they sit and chat. In another, Ai smokes three cigarettes while plates piled high with food spin slowly round on a Lazy Susan.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ai Weiwei (@aiww)

“It felt like a phone call that had been disconnected for 10 years suddenly reconnecting,” Ai told CNN about the trip. “The tone, rhythm, and speed all returned to how they were before.” He noted that it was a relief to speak Chinese again after so long.

Ai said that he didn’t take any special precautions when planning the trip. Though he was stopped, “inspected, and interrogated” for nearly two hours while entering China at Beijing’s main airport, he said the questions were “very simple.”

It has been speculated that over a decade of censoring Ai Weiwei’s name in China has been effective in reducing awareness of the artist and his work. Meanwhile, the country may have wished to avoid the international spectacle of refusing him entry.

In several recent interviews promoting his new book Ai Weiwei on Censorship, Ai has stated his belief that the West has its own forms of censorship to contend with, and that Western society is in decline. Though he was unsure why China, which conversely is in an “upward phase,” did not interfere with his trip to Beijing, he believed it may signal an acceptance of his practice.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Ai Weiwei (@aiww)

“Although a country of group may disagree with my positions, they at least recognize that I speak sincerely and not for personal gain,” he said.

In 2011, Ai was accused of tax evasion and detained in China for 81 days, although no formal charges were brought against him. His passport was also confiscated and, after his release, Ai spent four years under house arrest before fleeing China in 2015.

These actions by the Chinese government have generally been viewed as an attempt to silence dissent. In the years prior, Ai had produced politically-charged works like Hua Hao Yue Yuan (2010), a two-hour long documentary detailing the abuse suffered by two Chinese activists who were arrested for protesting against the Chinese Communist Party.