BBC News with Jerry Smit
The American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says China will fail in what she says are its efforts to resist democracy. In an interview published during high-level talks with a Chinese delegation, she said China was running scared because of the popular uprisings in the Arab world and was trying to stop history. At a joint news conference, Mrs Clinton said the talks had been frank.
"We discussed everything, and whether it was something that was sensitive to us or sensitive to them, all the difficult issues including human rights. And we both have made our concerns very clear to the other. We had
candid
discussions on some of our most
persistent
challenges from addressing North Korea and Iran to rebalancing the global economy."
The world-famous sculptor Anish Kapoor has called on museums and galleries around the world to close for a day to protest against the Chinese government's detention of the artist Ai Weiwei. Speaking to the BBC, Mr Kapoor said that the cultural community needed to stand
side by side
with Ai Weiwei, a
vocal
critic of the Chinese government.
"We as a community of artists and cultural bond, if you like, need to voice our solidarity with Ai Weiwei. It's completely unacceptable that simply for recording the deaths that have occurred through bureaucracy and
inefficiency
in his country he has seemingly been arrested and put away in this way."