Badiucao calls himself a “Chinese Aussie artist hunted by the Chinese Government”. It is easy to see why he says that.

Born in Shanghai, Badiucao was training to be a lawyer when he first became a convert to activism.

He was watching a pirated Taiwanese film with friends and, unbeknown to them, the film had the Tiananmen documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace spliced into it and the die was cast.

Later, recalling the incident to AFP, he said, "It was three hours, everybody just sat there and the room was completely dark, nobody even got up to turn on a light.”

None of them had ever heard of the Tiananmen Square incident or its horrific conclusion thanks to Chinese censorship.

He emigrated to Australia in 2009, abandoning his plan to become a lawyer. After his arrival, he worked as a kindergarten teacher while he studied for a master’s degree in education. He began using his artistic talent sin his spare time and, in 2011, starting drawing political cartoon, becoming a nagging thorn in the CCP’s side.

Badiucao had no formal art training in China but comes from a long line of creatives - his grandfather and great uncle were filmmakers in China who paid for their work with their lives in the 1950s.

Badiucao’s art is typified by the clever reworking of Communist propaganda imagery, subverting it to criticise the CCP and using the bold red and yellow of the Chinese flag. His work uses dark humour and clever word-play to skewer China’s leaders.

Badiucao’s illustration for the cover of she spring 2021 issoe of Index on Censorship magazine is typical of his work – striking and with a strong message to those who gaze upon it, reminding us of the West’s complicity in China’s rise to power.

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