‘China’s Banksy’, cartoonist Badiucao, drops his mask to mark Tiananmen crackdown’s 30th anniversary – and in fear of police reprisals
- Baduciao says he and his family have been under threat since being forced by Chinese authorities to cancel Hong Kong show last year
- Former law student became politicised after watching The Gate of Heavenly Peace, a documentary on the June 4 incident, spliced into Taiwanese drama
A Chinese cartoonist whose anonymous political satire earned him both comparisons with Banksy and the wrath of Beijing has outed himself as a former law school student who became politicised after watching a Tiananmen Square documentary in a dorm room.
Badiucao, whose subversive pieces regularly mock President Xi Jinping, has revealed his face and his personal story for the first time in the hope it will help protect him from the Chinese authorities.
He says he and his family have been under threat ever since he was forced to cancel a highly anticipated show in Hong Kong last year, with Chinese police allegedly telling relatives “there would be no mercy” if he did not pull out.
“I don’t think the Chinese Communist Party will ever forget or forgive its enemies, which in this case is me,” he said from Melbourne, where he currently lives.
“The only way to defeat that kind of terror is to expose everything openly … so everyone around in the world can see what’s going in China,” he said.
