Beijing. Chinese dissident artist and free speech advocate Ai Weiwei said that authorities in Beijing returned his passport on Wednesday, more than four years after it was confiscated following his 81-day secret detention.

Ai, 58, told Reuters by telephone that police from the Exit and Entry Bureau, which issues passports to Chinese citizens, called him on Wednesday morning to collect his passport, which he now has in hand.

Ai said he is legally allowed to travel outside China, but that will depend on whether other countries issue him visas.

“I’m not surprised because in reality, they’ve said they would return me my passport for many years,” Ai said. “They’ve never said they would never give it to me, except that it has dragged on for four years.”

The Ministry of Public Security, which runs the Exit and Entry Bureau, did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Ai’s supporters in the West have called on their governments to lobby China to return Ai’s passport to him. Ai has not been able to attend teaching engagements and exhibitions in Germany, the United States and England.

Ai said the first country he would want to travel to is Germany, where he would like to have a medical check-up and visit his son, who has been living in Berlin for 11 months.

In 2011, Ai was detained without any charge and held mainly in solitary confinement, sparking an international outcry. A court later upheld a $2.4 million fine against Ai for tax evasion.

The world-renowned artist maintains the charges from the tax evasion case were trumped up in retaliation for his criticism of the government.

In November 2013, the artist started protesting his travel ban by putting flowers in the basket of a bicycle outside his Beijing studio and home. On Twitter, he said he would do it every day until he “regains the right to travel freely.” On Wednesday, he said it had been 600 days.

Police did not give Ai “any additional conditions or warnings” for the return of his passport, he said, adding that it was “very relaxed.”

Ai said he could not say why authorities decided to return it to him now, but he took it to mean “there aren’t any problems.” He said the government surveillance has eased substantially and that he was confident that authorities would allow him to return if he left.

“Now that they’ve let me go abroad, I believe they will let me return home,” he said.

Reuters

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Beijing. China has completed some of its land reclamation on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, raising the stakes in Beijing’s territorial dispute with its Asian neighbors.

China stepped up its creation of artificial islands last year, alarming several countries in Asia and drawing criticism from Washington. The United States, which has called for a halt in China’s island building, said earlier this month that it was concerned about Beijing’s plans for more construction work, including for military defence.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing that the land reclamation projects on some islands and reefs in the South China Sea had been completed “in recent days.”

China had been working on land reclamation projects on seven reefs among the tiny islets at the center of the maritime territorial dispute involving the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

Recent satellite images have shown a hive of work on China’s new islands. US officials say China has reclaimed 1,500 acres of land this year alone.

The spokewoman did not specify where the land reclamation had been completed.

“As for the next step, China will begin fulfilling the relevant functions of the facilities,” Hua said.

“The construction is mainly to provide services to meet civilian demands so as to better facilitate China’s efforts at maritime search and rescue, disaster prevention and reduction, maritime research, meteorological observation, environmental protection, safety of navigation, fishery services and so on, in keeping with [our] international responsibilities and obligations,” she said.

“Certainly, our relevant construction will also include satisfying the necessary military defense needs,” she added.

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year.

Military facilities under construction include a 3,000-meter [10,000-foot] runway and airborne early warning radars, which could be operational by the year-end, according to one US commander.

Reuters

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