He made the Birds Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing so he'll be brought up forever.
I was introduced to his work as a kid and people seem to always mention him and his work just to say "China bad." Everytime I try to listen to why it just sounds like grey unlistenable sludge. Partially because I don't know much about history in general so I don't know what the mentioned parts of Chinese history are about. My final reason to give up is because I know much/all of what I hear is probably whitewashed propaganda. If he indeed has good criticism, I don't trust Western media to not twist his words out of their original meaning.
Ai Wei Wei destroyed a 2000 year old artefact for backpats from some whites. CPC should've executed him. CPC has an issue of being soft on xenophile compradors.
I think that’s probably an extreme reaction, they let him design their Olympic stadium after that event so they didn’t really care at all.
Including some people here on hexbear dot net if I remember correctly.