China has finally released controversial pop-artist Ai Weiwei on bail, according to state media.

Ai was arrested on April 3 after arriving at the Beijing International Airport following a series of high-profile art exhibits and gestures to mock the Chinese government.

Late last year, Ai Weiwei hosted a river crab banquet in Shanghai.

In Chinese, river crab is he xie, a homonym for harmony, a word ubiquitous in Chinese government slogans. Eating he xie was designed to make light of Beijing's parlance of socialist utopian values.

Then, the authorities held Ai under house arrest at his studio near the posh 798 art district in Beijing. The party went on without him.

Since he was detained in April, the international community has put great pressure on Beijing to release the internationally acclaimed artist, renowned for shows harshly criticizing Chinese society and politics that have shown in galleries from Shanghai to New York.

Although Ai is responsible for having constructed the Bird's Nest, the famed Beijing sports center constructed for the 2008 Olympics, he has made a career of deriding the Chinese government.

Today, Chinese state media announced that Ai had formally confessed political crimes. A company associated with Ai's family have also been implicated in corruption and tax evasion by the Chinese government, but Ai's relations say that is a construct of the Chinese government designed to demonize the dissident.

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