China's Artful Dissident

Only one brave protester

there resists the tanks.

The tanks tried again to move,

and were halted by their lone tormentor.

- Chinese artist, Badiucao, who disguises himself

out of fear of reprisals from the Chinese government,

has called on people all over the world

to recreate the image.

- The single biggest, national security threat is China.

This will be a kind of test.

The first time that my work actually entering

a Chinese territory.

We shall see the reaction from the Chinese government.

- You've got to make a decision about the exhibition.

- Yeah, what's going on? - Badi is fucking terrified.

- I don't know his name or who he is, so--

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And neither do we.

Can I ask you this?

No.

- So if I asked you if you were married,

could you answer that question?

No.

Where your parents live,

would you be able to tell me?

No.

- Which university you studied in Australia?

Could you tell me? - No.

Why is your identity concealed?

- It's not because I want to create

another Banksy.

It's more crucial for me that I have to protect myself

from the possible hunting by the Chinese government.

They will not just harm me,

but also the one that I loved, my family.

- Are you confident that the Chinese

authorities don't know who you are?

Well, I wish I could say yes,

but the real answer is, I don't know.

- Let's go to China's decision to remove

Presidential term limits from the Constitution,

allowing Xi Jinping to remain in power indefinitely.

China correspondent, Bill Burtles.

- This does put Xi Jinping on the same pedestal

as Mao, because it wasn't just the term limits

that were abolished yesterday.

Xi Jinping's ideology was written

into the National Constitution.

It's clear, let's go.

What is the picture you've done?

- It's showing how Xi Jinping is going

to be a lifelong leader, even after he dies.

No free speech, no access to information.

He's cracking down on human rights lawyers, artists, medias.

With his policy, the whole of China's moving to this

digital dictatorship, is expanding overseas

around the world, being more and more aggressive.

It works pretty well.

Today I don't think anyone will touch this,

and tomorrow, we'll be ready for the Chinese students.

Just for the record, this is PVA glue, so it's non-toxic.

Very environmentally friendly stuff.

It is the best time when I contributing myself,

using my art, for that's the moment that I can be completely

free and forgetting all the struggle in my daily life.

So normally people think art is about,

generally about cameras, but in the contemporary sense,

how you get a image to the outside world.

I was in a university in China,

and my friend downloaded a movie,

we just started watching it.

All of a sudden, the movie turned into a documentary

about Tiananmen massacre.

And when we finished it, we are all like frozen

in front of the screen.

And we're looking to each other, and to be honest,

we don't know what to say.

Our first thought is, "Is it even true?"

- Hospital wards are running out of space.

- These tanks have just provided an escort for about

30 troop trucks.

- I was really shocked when I found out

the truth of Tiananmen movement.

Shocked that this has been entirely erased from history.

- And I think one brave protestor's there,

resist the tanks.

The tanks tried again to move,

and were halted by their lone tormentor.

- If I imagine my future in China,

I feel like it's suffocating.

I can't really breathe.

with knowing that my rights, and my freedom will be eaten

away by society like that.

That was the moment I realized I had to leave China

if I wanted to live without all this fear.

So in 2009, I moved to Australia.

I became an Australian citizen.

It was the first time I started to feel I'm a free man,

and I am free to create artworks about China.

It all started as like a hobby.

I'm coming to do an interview, my name is Badiucao.

I did one piece of street art in Melbourne

that had really bring the world's attention

to my art career.

- If you go just south of Chinatown,

in Central Melbourne, there is a little cobbled street,

more of a back alley really, covered in graffiti.

Nothing particularly unusual about that,

but this year, there was one drawing

that attracted a fair bit of attention.

It showed a man and a woman, embracing each other.

The man is the late Liu Xiaobo,

a Nobel Laureate and Chinese dissident.

This drawing appeared just two days before his death.

The woman is his widow, Liu Xia,

who hasn't been seen since his funeral.

The artists behind it is one of China's most

prolific and provocative cartoonists.

- Liu Xiaobo is like Nelson Mandela in China.

He's the leader for the Tiananmen movement in 1989.

In 2010, he win the Nobel Peace Prize

for his continuing fight for Chinese democracy.

He couldn't go to the Nobel ceremony,

because he's in prison.

I made my Liu Xiaobo cartoon, and posted it online,

and make it free for anyone to download

and pasted it on the street.

And it went global after that.

And two days after, he passed away.

We just saw a life being turned off in this brutal way.

And people are not even allowed to memorize him.

- I now know a bit about you, and there's a lot I don't

know, I don't know your real name, I don't know your age,

I don't know where your family are et cetera.

But I know obviously, I know who you are.

Yeah.

- How many other people in Melbourne know who you are?

I'd say probably no-one.

It's too hard to use Twitter now.

Hey. - How are you doing?

- I'm good, sorry, I can't really see well, but--

- Let me introduce you, Kal, this is Badiucao.

- Badiucao, Kal. - Very nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, how are you?

I'm good.

Wow. - It's a copy of my,

- That's fantastic. - My book, 35 years.

Did you ever meet any of the cartoonists on the strip?

- Not really, I've been very cautious about

meeting people. - Yes, of course.

- On the other hand, I do want you know,

to make friends, it's very important.

Even here, I can't show you my face.

That's really the difficulty that I'm facing.

Of course, yeah, of course.

The changes that I would like to see both in our society,

and in other societies won't happen in my lifetime.

The best you can do is put the seeds in the ground,

for it to possibly to happen later.

And that's the best you can do.

So welcome to my two guests today,

I'm Rosie Blau, I'm the editor of 1843.

So Badiucao is a political artist from China.

Badiucao now lives in exile, but as we'll talk about,

his subversive work still circulates in China.

Who do you really want to be seeing your cartoons?

- All my work is, basically it has no copyrights.

So everybody is welcome to download and share

in their individual level.

So a lot of people on Twitter actually download my work,

and repost it inside of China,

on social media like WeChat.

But obviously, it will be deleted very soon,

and sometimes they're facing a very hard consequence,

like their account can be suspended,

they can be invited to the police station to drink tea.

- You keep harking back, particularly to 1989

and Tiananmen Square.

Explain to us why you think it's so important

to keep putting those images in front of people.

- The image that I wanna use more is the tank man.

For me, it's really a symbol, a totem,

for the Chinese dissident.

That I think, is something that China needs.

It's something that I personally need.

- Have you drawn a cartoon that you regret,

or that you now consider a mistake?

Yeah, all the time.

I'm actually (mumbles). - Oh, you are?

- It was a very fast talk, quick talk.

I feel like I could go for another hour in there.

- Single biggest national security threat is China.

- This is the reality of President Xi Jinping's China.