Also, he still had hope that exposing conditions in the Institute would have some effect. So he sneaked out of the country in 1995 to join Dr. Zhang. Originally I was very naive, I thought that once this material was published, the Chinese government would admit that these immoral things had happened and would stop this treatment of orphans. But the official statements just say that this never happened, that we made this up. A recent article in China Daily implied that Ai himself had tied up a dying child he photographed, that the pictures had been posed and faked.
China claims to be a country with a rule of law.
He hopes that more Chinese people will find out about what happened in the Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute and believes that they would share his anger if they knew that the leadership had been more concerned about saving face than saving orphans. Like people anywhere in the world, they would be extremely angry, because everyone's life is valuable. Even beating a dog or a cat to death, people find that terrible. Everyone would think that is a completely inhumane thing to do. China is a socialist country, a humanitarian country.