Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one's imagination - perhaps more importantly - creativity is the power to act.
China restricts the society's freedom of speech. The Communist Party imposes these limits because it lacks confidence towards the future and has no ideals. Nowadays, China is experiencing the detrimental effects of such decisions. Its citizens have no creativity.
I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture.
I think you can give meaning to any condition; you can be poor or unsuccessful or be so-called successful. But I don't think that it would give an individual human being a better condition.
We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
Stupidity can win for a moment, but it can never really succeed because the nature of humans is to seek freedom. Rulers can delay that freedom, but they cannot stop it.
The deadly weapon against totalitarian society is openness - doing everything very openly on the Internet, letting people know every detail, any little development. Once it is out there, everybody can make their own judgement. [Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden.
Everything is selected by the central government without good judgment or an understanding of culture to make it really safe. They will become nobody to maintain their power and be raised to the next higher level.
As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am. As long as I can communicate, I'm not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn't matter at all.
For all the tough talk about China during the presidential debates, Romney and Obama evaded any mention of China's suspect human rights record, corruption, and rule of law.
By not tackling these controversial topics, the candidates are protecting a strategic partnership with China at the expense of essential human values and beliefs.
Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions; in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.