RADICAL CHINESE artist Ai Weiwei has been released on bail, state media reported, citing the Beijing police, after admitting tax evasion and because “he confessed his crimes in good spirit” and suffers from a chronic disease.
“The decision comes also in consideration of the fact that Ai has repeatedly said he is willing to pay the taxes he evaded,” said the Xinhua news agency.
The 53-year-old artist is best known internationally for his work on the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium. He made waves last year with his exhibition Sunflower Seeds, consisting of 100 million porcelain seeds, in London's Tate Modern.
Police said Mr Ai’s company, the Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd, “was found to have evaded a huge amount of taxes and intentionally destroyed accounting documents”.
His family was still unaware of his release late last night.
His arrest at Beijing airport in April had been widely expected. In 2009 police burst into his hotel room in Chengdu and beat him so badly that surgeons in Munich later had to drill two holes in his head to stop a brain bleed. In January, his Shanghai studio was demolished.
What is unclear is what happens to Mr Ai now.
He could be placed under house arrest, like the blind barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng, who has been under a particularly brutal form of house arrest since his release from jail last year.
“Democracy is not a condition we can really choose or not choose; it’s absolutely necessary,” he said in an interview earlier this year. “Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s difficult, and sometimes can be even dramatic, but I believe what we do is very necessary and essential. It is something that we cannot really avoid by living in China,” he said.
As the son of revered poet Ai Qing, denounced during the Cultural Revolution and packed off to a labour camp, Ai has always been able to work with relative freedom in China.
There had been rumours that the government was surprised by the international reaction to his arrest and that his high profile had made it difficult for the authorities to do anything other than take him out of circulation.
The news of Ai’s release also coincides with a visit by premier Wen Jiabao to Hungary, Britain and Germany.
Ai was in the process of buying a studio in Berlin when he was arrested and was appointed a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin during his incarceration.
He could be sent abroad into exile. The public excuse of ill-health is often cited when dealing with high-profile dissidents, with activists such as Wei Jingsheng and Harry Wu, for example, being released on grounds of poor health before being exiled.
News of Ai’s release comes shortly before the expected release on Sunday of prominent HIV-Aids activist Hu Jia, who has served his 3½-year sentence for sedition.
Nobel Peace Price winner Liu Xiaobo remains in jail on subversion charges.