World
Gao Zhen, Detained Chinese Artist, Keeps Creating From Prison
For the wife, Zhao Yaliang, the pictures are visual love letters from her husband, the imprisoned artist Gao Zhen.
Mr. Gao is in a Chinese detention center, awaiting trial and almost certain conviction on charges that he broke a law against slandering the country’s heroes and martyrs, according to Ms. Zhao. He is being prosecuted for irreverent sculptures of the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong that he made more than 15 years ago, before the law even existed.
Mr. Gao, 69, is part of a generation of avant-garde Chinese artists that achieved international fame in the 2000s. While he later emigrated to the United States, Mr. Gao was detained in August 2024 at his studio on the outskirts of Beijing when he and his family visited China.
The authorities have since blocked Ms. Zhao, a writer and photographer, from leaving the country. She and their son, who is a U.S. citizen, have been stuck in China for over a year. The State Department said in a statement that the United States was “deeply concerned” about Mr. Gao’s arrest and the restrictions placed on Ms. Zhao. “We strongly oppose any exit ban that prevents a U.S. citizen child from departing China,” it said.
Speaking by video chat, Ms. Zhao, 47, says that while in detention, her husband wrote letters and made some 80 of these hand-torn pictures — a version of the traditional folk art of Chinese paper cutting, or jianzhi.
“He’s telling me to take better care of myself and our son,” she said, pointing to an image of a woman with two streaks running down her face — a portrait of herself weeping.
Mr. Gao faces up to three years in prison for acts that “damage the reputation” of Chinese heroes and martyrs.
His arrest under that law, which was passed in 2018, is testimony to how much the space for expression has shrunk in China. In the early 2000s, he and his younger brother Gao Qiang held secret exhibitions in Beijing and got away with taking on taboo topics like the 1966-76 decade of political turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in the death of their father, and the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Known as the Gao brothers, the duo were seen as cultural ambassadors to the West, representing a China that was more willing to face its past.
In today’s China, that kind of reckoning has become nearly impossible, as the leader Xi Jinping has overseen a crackdown on the questioning of official narratives. The law against slandering martyrs and heroes has also been used to punish journalists, stand-up comedians and regular citizens making comments online.
Mr. Gao was arrested for three provocative sculptures of Mao Zedong that he made with his brother. In one, the revolutionary is depicted with breasts and a Pinocchio nose; in another, a group of Chairman Maos with guns prepare to execute Jesus Christ. The third, called “Mao’s Guilt,” portrays the former leader, who was responsible for years of famine and upheaval, kneeling in repentance.
“Mao Zedong has been dead for nearly half a century, yet his ghost still haunts China, harming Chinese people,” said Mr. Gao’s brother, who also emigrated to New York. He said the Chinese authorities had arrested Mr. Gao merely for doing his job as an artist.
“This humiliation,” the brother said, “torments me every day.”
The trigger for Mr. Gao’s detention may not have been his art but his decision to move to the United States. He and his family relocated from Beijing to New York in 2022, joining his brother and other government critics who have been driven away by Mr. Xi’s crackdown and severe pandemic-era controls.
When his mother-in-law became ill last year, his wife decided to return for a visit. Mr. Gao insisted on joining her and their son, even though friends warned it could be dangerous. He wanted to revive their work studio and argued he was not important enough for the police to bother with. As a permanent U.S. resident Mr. Gao had traveled back and forth between China and the United States without issue for the last decade.
But on the morning of Aug. 26, almost three months after he had returned to China, more than 30 police stormed Mr. Gao’s art studio in Sanhe City in Hebei Province, near Beijing. Four of the officers grabbed Ms. Zhao, forcing her and their son into the kitchen. She tried to comfort their son as they watched officers pin her husband to a couch and handcuff him.
“Now with him being taken away, I realize that we were always living on the edge of a cliff,” Ms. Zhao said.
Victoria Zhang, a friend of the Gao brothers and president of Kunlun Press and the Borderless Culture and Art Center in New York, believes the Chinese authorities want to make an example of Mr. Gao to silence others who have moved overseas.
“Don’t assume that just because you’ve fled abroad, the Chinese Communist Party can’t touch you. The moment you return home they will punish you,” Ms. Zhang said.
Ms. Zhao later attempted to return to New York with her son but was stopped at the airport in Beijing by officials who said she was not allowed to leave on national security grounds. When she tried to go to the U.S. Embassy for help, the two were intercepted by police and taken back to Sanhe City.
“It’s the strategy they always use — controlling your family to get you to confess quickly,” she said. Despite this, she says her husband will not plead guilty.
She and their son are staying in an apartment in Sanhe City, where they lead an existence in limbo. While Jia longs for New York, where he went by the name of Justin, Ms. Zhao tries to keep his life as normal as possible. After he missed the first semester of first grade, the police found a local school for him to enroll in. The mother and son’s days are now filled with school and after-school activities, and her attempts to limit his screen time. They spend weekends in the 798 Art District in Beijing, where the Gao brothers once held exhibitions.
Still, she worries about the trauma her son has experienced. For a time, he refused to leave her side, and he still wakes up at night with nightmares. Although the boy saw his father being detained by police, Ms. Zhao tells him that “Dad is just away at work.” This has also become the story that the son now repeats at school when classmates ask.
“In reality, he understands. He knows everything. He just wants to comfort me,” Ms. Zhao said.
Along with the letters, the torn paper portraits were a source of solace for Ms. Zhao, but now all their correspondence has been stopped. In August, Ai Weiwei, the dissident Chinese artist, published a letter that appeared to be from her husband. Since then, Mr. Gao has been cut off from getting pen and paper, in what Ms. Zhao believes is punishment for that public communication. And he can no longer send or receive letters.
Ms. Zhao says her husband’s health has suffered during detention. He has often needed a wheelchair, and he may be suffering a hardening of the blood vessels called arteriosclerosis, which could cause a stroke and other problems.
She worries about his mental health too. He has been banned from using the detention center’s library and he is not allowed time outdoors, she said.
Ms. Zhao now spends her days working on some of her husband’s projects and keeping a diary with Jia. Their lawyer is allowed to have weekly meetings with Mr. Gao at the detention center, but she is not allowed to see him. She and her son go anyway, waiting outside.
“I get to feel a little closer to him,” she said.
World
Iranian protesters rename Tehran street after Trump, plead ‘don’t let them kill us’ amid crackdown
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Iranian protesters intensified nationwide demonstrations over the past 24 hours, directly appealing to President Donald Trump while chanting anti-regime slogans. Footage published Wednesday showed a protester in Tehran symbolically renaming a street after Trump, while other videos captured handwritten appeals reading, “Don’t let them kill us,” Iran International reported.
Holly Dagres, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, posted the video on X stating, “Since Trump’s comments about the Iran protests, I’ve seen numbers videos of Iranian protesters either thanking him or, in this case, renaming streets after the US president.”
The appeals came as demonstrators faced a widening security crackdown, including the deployment of armed units and tear gas near major civilian sites in Tehran.
TRUMP SIGNS ‘MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN’ HAT ALONGSIDE LINDSEY GRAHAM
Exiled Iranian opposition leader Reza Pahlavi said the current unrest represents a historic opportunity to end Iran’s Islamic Republic.
“In all these years, I’ve never seen an opportunity as we see today in Iran,” Pahlavi said in an interview aired Tuesday on “Hannity.”
“Iranian people are more than ever committed to bringing an end to this regime, as the world has witnessed in the last few days, the level of demonstrations is unprecedented in Iran,” he said.
Pahlavi said protests have spread to more than 100 cities and emphasized the role of Iran’s traditional merchant class, describing developments inside the country’s bazaars as a turning point. “We are beginning to see more and more defections,” Pahlavi said, adding that “Either way, the regime is crumbling and is very close to collapsing.”
IRAN ON THE BRINK AS PROTESTERS MOVE TO TAKE TWO CITIES, APPEAL TO TRUMP
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., posted a photo of himself posing with President Donald Trump, who is holding a signed “Make Iran Great Again” hat. (Lindsey Graham / X)
Over the past 24 hours, Iran International reported continued protests and strikes across the country, including in Tehran, Tabriz, Qazvin, Kermanshah, Kerman, Shiraz, Falavarjan and Bandar Abbas. Tehran’s Grand Bazaar remained a focal point of unrest, with large crowds chanting against Iran’s leadership as authorities responded with tear gas and armed deployments.
Security operations expanded into sensitive civilian locations. Videos published by Iran International showed tear gas used near or inside Tehran’s Sina Hospital and the Plasco Shopping Center.
Protesters hold signs during a demonstration in Iran amid ongoing unrest, according to images released by the Iranian opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran. (NCRI )
Casualty and arrest figures continued to rise. The Human Rights Activists News Agency, cited by Iran International on Wednesday, reported at least 36 people killed since protests began, including 34 protesters and two members of Iran’s security forces, with more than 2,000 arrests nationwide. Iranian authorities have not released updated official figures.
New footage from the past day showed demonstrators lighting fires in the streets of Shiraz and chanting “Death to Khamenei,” referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In Qazvin, protesters were heard chanting, “Law enforcement, return to the side of the nation.”
Iranian protesters try to take control of two cities in western Iran as nationwide unrest continues, with demonstrators chanting ‘Death to Khamenei’ in the streets. (Getty)
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Workers also joined the unrest, with strikes reported at the South Pars gas refinery and widespread shop closures at major markets in Tehran and Tabriz.
For the past year, staying in Donald Trump’s good graces has become a top priority for European leaders, who have gone the extra mile to appease the mercurial US president, rein in his most radical impulses and keep him firmly engaged in what is their be-all and end-all: Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Though Europe is by far the largest donor to Kyiv, nobody on the continent is under the illusion that the invasion can be resisted without US-made weapons and come to an eventual end without Washington at the negotiating table.
In practice, the strategic calculus has translated into painful sacrifices, most notably the punitive tariffs that Trump forced Europeans to endure.
“It’s not only about the trade. It’s about security. It is about Ukraine. It is about current geopolitical volatility,” Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commissioner for Trade, said in June as he defended the trade deal that imposed a sweeping 15% tariff on EU goods.
The same thinking is now being replicated in the saga over Greenland’s future.
As the White House ramps up its threats to seize the vast semi-autonomous island, including, if necessary, by military force, Europeans are walking an impossibly thin line between their moral imperative to defend Denmark’s territorial integrity and their deep-rooted fear of risking Trump’s wrath.
The precarity of the situation was laid bare at this week’s meeting of the “Coalition of the Willing” in Paris, which French President Emmanuel Macron convened to advance the work on security guarantees for Ukraine.
The high-profile gathering was notable because of the first-ever in-person participation of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the chief negotiators appointed by Trump.
At the end of the meeting, Macron hailed the “operational convergence” achieved between Europe and the US regarding peace in Ukraine. By his side, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was equally sanguine, speaking of “excellent progress”.
But it did not take long for the elephant in the room to make an appearance.
Hard pivot
The first journalist who took the floor asked Macron whether Europe could “still trust” America in light of the threats against Greenland. In response, the French president quickly highlighted the US’s participation in the security guarantees.
“I have no reason to doubt the sincerity of that commitment,” Macron said. “As a signatory of the UN charter and a member of NATO, the United States is here as an ally of Europe, and it is, as such, that it has worked alongside us in recent weeks.”
Starmer was also put on the spot when a reporter asked him about the value of drafting security guarantees for a country at war “on the very day” that Washington was openly talking about seizing land from a political ally.
Like Macron, Starmer chose to look at the bright side of things.
“The relationship between the UK and the US is one of our closest relationships, particularly on issues of defence, security and intelligence,” the British premier said. “And we work with the US 24/7 on those issues.”
Starmer briefly referred to a statement published earlier on Tuesday by the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the UK and Denmark in defence of Greenland.
The statement obliquely reminded the US to uphold “the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders” enshrined in the UN Charter – precisely the same tenets that Moscow is violating at large in Ukraine.
The text did not contain any explicit condemnation of the goal to forcefully annex Greenland and did not spell out any potential European retaliation.
“Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” its closing paragraph read.
Conspicuous silence
The lack of censure was reminiscent of the European response to the US operation that just a few days earlier removed Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.
Besides Spain, which broke ranks to denounce the intervention as a blatant breach of international law, Europeans were conspicuously silent on legal matters. Rather than condemn, they focused on Venezuela’s democratic transition.
Privately, officials and diplomats concede that picking up a fight with Trump over Maduro’s removal, a hostile dictator, would have been counterproductive and irresponsible in the midst of the work to advance security guarantees for Ukraine.
The walking-on-eggs approach, however, is doomed to fail when it comes to Greenland, a territory that belongs to a member of both the EU and NATO.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that the entire security architecture forged at the end of World War II, which allies have repeatedly invoked to stand up to the Kremlin’s neo-imperialism, would collapse overnight in the event of an annexation. The worry is that trying to stay in Trump’s good graces at all costs might come at an unthinkable price.
“Europeans are clearly in a ‘double-bind’: Since they are in desperate need of US support in Ukraine, their responses to US actions – whether on Venezuela or Trump threatening Denmark to annex Greenland – are weak or even muted,” said Markus Ziener, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
“Europeans are afraid that criticising Trump could provide a pretext for the US president to conclude a peace deal at Ukraine’s and Europe’s expense. Is this creating a credibility gap on the part of the EU? Of course. But confronted with a purely transactional US president, there seems to be no other way.”
Note: Map shows the area with a shake intensity of 4 or greater, which U.S.G.S. defines as “light,” though the earthquake may be felt outside the areas shown. The New York Times
A strong, 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck in the Philippine Sea on Wednesday, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The temblor happened at 11:02 a.m. Philippine time about 17 miles east of Santiago, Philippines, data from the agency shows.
U.S.G.S. data earlier reported that the magnitude was 6.7.
As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.
Aftershocks in the region
An aftershock is usually a smaller earthquake that follows a larger one in the same general area. Aftershocks are typically minor adjustments along the portion of a fault that slipped at the time of the initial earthquake.
Quakes and aftershocks within 100 miles
Source: United States Geological Survey | Notes: Shaking categories are based on the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. When aftershock data is available, the corresponding maps and charts include earthquakes within 100 miles and seven days of the initial quake. All times above are Philippine time. Shake data is as of Tuesday, Jan. 6 at 10:16 p.m. Eastern. Aftershocks data is as of Wednesday, Jan. 7 at 12:18 a.m. Eastern.
Maps: Daylight (urban areas); MapLibre (map rendering); Natural Earth (roads, labels, terrain); Protomaps (map tiles)
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