{"id":55883,"date":"2016-04-30T23:19:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T23:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=55883 "},"modified":"2016-04-30T23:19:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T23:19:00","slug":"55883-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=55883","title":{"rendered":"Lego admits \\&#8217;mistake\\&#8217; in Ai Weiwei row"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; background-color: white;\">28 April 2016<\/span><\/p><div>&nbsp;<\/div>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2016\/17\/2016429_87677582_gettyimages-496395410.jpg\" alt=\"2016429_87677582_gettyimages-496395410.jpg (660&#215;371)\" \/><\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Picture of Lego bricksImage copyrightGetty Images<\/span><\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Image caption<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Lego said it was &#8220;a typical example of what can go wrong in a big company&#8221;<\/span><\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Lego&#8217;s decision to reject Chinese artist Ai Weiwei&#8217;s request for a bulk order of its bricks last year was a &#8220;mistake&#8221;, the toy firm has admitted.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Vice-Chairman Kirk Kristiansen told The Wall Street Journal an employee had misinterpreted the company&#8217;s policy on political neutrality.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">In October, Ai said his request was declined because Lego considered his planned exhibition to be too political.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">The artist is known for criticism of the Chinese government.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">&#8220;It was an internal mistake,&#8221; Mr Kirk Kristiansen said.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">He said the decision had been made &#8220;very low in the organisation by our consumer service department&#8221;, and that Lego&#8217;s board had not been involved at the time.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Mr Kirk Kristiansen&#8217;s son and successor Thomas added: &#8220;It is a typical example of what can go wrong in a big company.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Lego&#8217;s refusal to provide bricks for Ai&#8217;s artwork on political dissidents prompted people around the world to donate bricks at &#8220;Lego collection points&#8221; set up in different cities.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">The artist ended up making a new series of artworks based on the incident as a commentary on freedom of speech and political art.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">In January, Lego decided to stop asking bulk customers what they wanted to do with the bricks.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">It said such customers should instead make clear that the company does not endorse works shown in public.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">Ai later told the BBC that Lego&#8217;s U-turn was a &#8220;victory for freedom of speech&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><span style=\"font-family: Arial; color: #222222; font-size: 12pt; background: white;\">The artist also appeared to react to Lego&#8217;s decision by posting a picture on Instagram of a young boy sticking bricks onto his face, accompanied by a grinning emoji caption.<\/span><\/p>  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>  <p><br \/><\/p>  <p><span style=\" font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background:white\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-36158926\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">For detail please visit here<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Vice-Chairman Kirk Kristiansen told The Wall Street Journal an employee had misinterpreted the company&#39;s policy on political neutrality.In October, Ai said his request was declined because Lego considered his planned exhibition to be too political&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}