Years ago, I'd seen some his art in China and liked it, and I vaguely know he's an activist, but I don't follow it so I didn't know he had left the country until I read the article. I don't think anyone would know what had happened if he wasn't internationally famous.

What I meant (by 'the last part') is that if we excuse the government for politically motivated force to punish non-violent dissent for any reason, then we are agreeing with the worst form of corruption. Bribes (and excusing them) are bad enough, but excusing threats, violence, and property destruction by the state is worse. How to create a better (more fair) place to live for the poor and weak with this kind of threat, when even the wealthy, connected, and famous can't speak up?

When I see this sort of acceptance from my colleagues from Africa, India, South America it saddens me just as much as it does in China.

You can not image how sad I was/am as someone comes out of that system and I love my nation from the bottom of my heart. I want to see my nation has a bit more awareness of fairness you mentioned. The part of Ai I criticize is mostly how he got away from those kind off trouble safely while collecting so many credits internationally. Sounds strange to outsiders, I know. I just have deeper understanding of what the consequence for many of his activities should've if that was someone else. Outsiders don't have knowledge of this. So as expected, I got many downvotes on this one. Some reporters lost their lives and were betrayed by their wives since they were the first to report some food/medicine quality issues affecting a lot of people (in some cases, the majority victims were very young kids) over the past 2 decades. They did what actually mattered in a massive scale but were not known to average outsiders. People like them are not very marketable in the outsider funding market (This is just a simple and blunt way of describing some fancy and socially high-profiled things. This can get many downvotes as well.). We know too many people like them. And Ai became an icon for outsiders in such a way. Hopefully, my rant can give you more information to know what I feel. There is nothing people can do. There is no party can/need collect the opposing force and combine them into something bigger. Cooperating is the way to go or you are forced to get funding from outsiders to fulfill their own agendas. And they do not know what Chinese think of. So once they live on outsiders' funding system. What they delivered associate little to what average Chinese can echo. Soon they are not relevant any more. It's a different system.