People’s Republic of the Missing: China makes people disappear

Berlin A black hole. This is how Ai Weiwei describes in his autobiography the non-place in which he was made to disappear for 81 days from April 2011 onwards. Cut off from the outside world, in a secret Beijing prison, the artist eked out an existence of banal solitude. He later processed his experiences in fiberglass replicas of his cell: Prisoner Ai on a mattress, on the toilet, in the shower. The guards never leave his side.

It is the best-known case from a country in which dissidents, activists, booksellers, researchers, even apparently non-political celebrities disappear again and again. After tennis player Peng Shuai made allegations of sexual assault against Party cadre Zhang Gaoli in November, she was not seen for weeks. The hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai went viral on Western social media.