At home, as abroad, a softer life has blunted the reformers' edge. Then there is the attitude of the West. Hu Ping, editor of the New York-based Chinese monthly Beijing Spring and a friend of Liu Xiaobo, wrote bitterly on the subject following Liu's Nobel award: "As they [the Communist Party] see it, the current strategy works. The formula ‘money + violence' works, and we stay on top. We know what the world means by human rights and democracy, but why should we do that? Aren't we getting stronger and richer all the time? Twenty years ago the West wasn't afraid of us, and now they have to be. Why should we change what works?"

That was not the case in 1980s Moscow, where nothing worked at all. The real parallel is with contemporary Russia. As Ai is imprisoned the former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been sent down for another six years on tax charges too.

Meanwhile both regimes protest their ultimately democratic credentials. In an uncharacteristically soothing statement Putin has said that it would take time for a multiparty system to take root in Russia. On the eve of a trip to Britain in 2006 the Chinese Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, said something similar: "Democracy is a value pursued by all mankind and a fruit of civilisation created by mankind. However, in different historical stages and different countries democracy is achieved through different forms and in different ways."

Beneath the banner of cultural difference each country is seeking to ward off the advent of representative government in any meaningful sense. What the sweet-talk comes down to is the perpetuation of a central role for the state, a single party in all but name, highly circumscribed freedom of expression and a readiness to crush dissent.

As Russia edges backwards and China's zigzag liberalisation becomes more zag than zig, a certain alignment between the two countries is taking place. In Russia political reform went first, the economy next. In China it has been the other way around, yet in the long term both are converging in the direction of "managed democracy", a Russian euphemism for a single-party state.

In his most airy obscurities ("You need a purpose to express yourself, but that expression is its own purpose") Ai Weiwei can sound strangely Mao-like, but on politics he can be crisply pragmatic. Of the change in China's leadership due to be ratified by the 18th CCP congress next year he has observed: "We are not expecting much from the next generation of leaders. Maybe the generation after. After another decade they will be more open in their ideas."

If he is saying that sunflower seeds do not flower overnight, especially when they have been downtrodden for so long, conceptually speaking, I would go along with that.