By Herman Lai, posted Nov 5, 2011 at 2:58 AM, 815 views,

Netizens Sending Out Million RMB via Alipay to Help Out Dissident Chinese Artist Ai WeiWei

The dissident Chinese Artists Ai Weiwei had showed up across international news headline since he was arrested and detained without charge by the Chinese government for 81-days. Ai was released by the government but still carrying an accusation of $2.4m tax evasion that had to be paid within 15 days. From now on, he still got about 10 days to collect the fund. If he didn’t pay the penalty, his wife could go to jail. The incident drew lot of his supporters to give out helping hands.

According to Ai said, the accusation of tax evasion led all of his company’s financial documents confiscated by police while he was detained by the government, and there weren’t any evidence to proof he really did evasion. Moreover, in a two-hours interview with Ai on Wednesday, he disclosed he will “fight to death“. In his dictionary, there’s no such word ’surrender’.

Ai Qing’s former residence mortgage collateral statement.

Ai Weiwei is in a very difficult situation, his mother and brother said they were mortgaging Ai’s father former residence to support him, he cannot find evidence to prove his innocent as all of his financial documents had confiscated by the government.

Eventually, Ai had posted his bank account number and address on his Weibo’s account to ask for help Amazingly, it had provoked thousands of Chinese Netizens to donate million of RMB through Alipay and Paypal accounts, and all these money were collected within 12 hours. The supporters of Ai Weiwei say they are not “donating”, but “loaning” money to Ai. Making thousands of Chinese netizens the debtor of Ai, he also said on his Twitter account that he would return every single cent of the money whether he succeeds or fails in fighting the charges against him. The money from Netizens now had accumlated up to $1.1 million yuans. If the rate of donation remained the same in the following week, then it is going to be enough for sure.

According to a trusted volunteer who managed the donation said, there were 5,232 donors lend out a total of $1.1 million yuan to Ai Weiwei. Among all donors, there were 4,596 donors using Alipay that had sent him $862,331 yuans, the remaining came through Paypal, bank transfer and postal order.

In an interview with the Chinese service of Deutsche Welle, professor Ai Xiaoming of Zhongshan University, one of China’s more liberal universities, said:

“The response by netizens is not just their way of expressing their support for Ai Weiwei, but also a sign of protest against the injustice meted out by the powers that be. This is a serious message.”

The Chinese government had already shut down Ai Weiwei’s Weibo (China’s Twitter-like service) account and also block any search of his name, but Ai had been quietly operating under the pseudonym Ai Huzi (@艾虎子). Presumably, Alibaba will soon have to shut down Ai’s Alipay account to cease the donation.

If you would like to give a helping hand:
Ai Weiwei‘s Alipay/Paypal account is fakesheji@gmail.com.

Lastly, here is a comic caricature about Ai Weiwei. The pear of top of his head implies he is under pressure, and the tomato is interviewing him how will he solve the tax evasion issue. Ai replied, “sold myself”…

Source: Penn-Olson, Shanghaiist