Chinese artist Badiucao: Drawing truth to power

The Winter Olympics in Beijing were games wreathed in controversy. To many, China was
a problematic host, given the country's human rights abuses and hard authoritarian turn.
One of the loudest voices condemning China is not a voice at all, but rather, a hand. Since
self-exiling from China in 2009, the artist known simply as Badiucao has used his work to
take on the country's leader Xi Jinping, specifically, and the regime more generally. Like all
the best political cartoonists, Badiucao is, alternately angry and playful as he calls attention
to what he sees as China's brutality. As we first reported in December, it's come at a steep
price. Badiucao may never go home again. But on he goes, traveling the world, using paint
and wit – online and on walls - to draw truth to power.

Badiucao's work in Miami Beach

Had you been in Miami Beach last fall, you'd be forgiven for walking by this plaza and
thinking you'd encountered promotional billboards for the Beijing Winter Olympics. But a
closer look revealed a provocative visual argument for why China was unfit to host the
games. Here was a Chinese hockey player bloodying a Tibetan monk. A Chinese
snowboarder atop a surveillance camera. A faceless Chinese biathlete poised to execute a
member of the Uighur minority. A curler representing China's delay in warning the world
about COVID. This was the handiwork of Badiucao, a 35-year-old Chinese exile, now based
in Australia.

Jon Wertheim: I notice if you look closely, those aren't conventional Olympic rings…

Badiucao: They are actually made of barbed wire. That's exactly how China is going to use
Olympics. Not as a celebration for humanity, but actually use it as a platform to promoting
its propaganda, which is fundamentally cracking down on people's basic rights.
Badiucao had come to south Florida to accept the Human Rights Foundation's Vaclav
Havel Prize for creative dissent.

Jon Wertheim: What do you see as the purpose of your art?

Badiucao: I sometimes just imagine I'm this kid who's holding a big rock and just throw the
rock into the lake so that we see all the splash, we see the change.

Jon Wertheim: You throw your rock in this lake, see the splash, see where the ripples,
ripple.

Badiucao: Exactly.

China does not tolerate ripples. Inside China, there are strict laws forbidding mocking and
questioning leaders of the communist party, known as the CCP. Even outside China,
dissent does not go over well.

Jon Wertheim: Do you feel in danger? Do you feel unsafe?

Badiucao: Well, this is actually my daily routine that I will receive death threat in a daily
basis online, on my social media, Twitter, Instagram, direct message.

Badiucao knows that as an artist poking the Chinese regime, he risks retaliation, both
against himself and his family back in China. For years, he hid behind a mask in public,
working incognito, guerilla-style, both in Australia and any time he traveled. He adopted a
pseudonym, Badiucao, a name that, purposely he says, has no meaning.

Jon Wertheim: How many people know your real name?

Badiucao: If you know I'm Badiucao, then you don't know my real name. And if you know
my real name, then you don't know I'm Badiucao.
 Badiucao
When the Chinese figured out his real identity three years ago, Badiucao initially went
underground. But he took off his mask and has continued hurling darts at the regime. In one
recent cartoon, tennis star Peng Shuai confronts the reality of accusing a former vice
premier of sexual assault.

Badiucao: I wanna be an inspiring figure. I want my art to helping others to collecting

courage and join me. But if I giving up this, then what does it say to the rest of them?

Jon Wertheim: What is the relationship between your popularity and your security?

Badiucao: I do think it has a very close relationship.

Jon Wertheim: So almost the more popular you get, you're buying yourself an extra layer of
security?

Badiucao: Yeah. (laughs) And that's the only way that you can do it.

Maybe so, but being popular also means his work has been scrubbed by censors inside
China.

Jon Wertheim: What is it about your work that drives this regime crazy?