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By awarding Chinese literary critic Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize
yesterday, the five-member committee
in Oslo did more than recognize one of the mainland's most prominent and
worthy dissidents. They
endorsed the idea that "China" can be something different from, and better
than, the Chinese government.
They may have helped hundreds of millions of Chinese to see and feel this
truth more clearly.
Mr. Liu may have trouble picking up his prize. He is currently serving an 11
-year prison sentence for
"incitement to subvert state power." The grounds for the charge were
primarily Mr. Liu's support for Charter
08, a citizens' manifesto that was conceived in conscious admiration of
Charter 77 in the former
Czechoslovakia and published in December 2008 to mark the 60th anniversary
of the U.N. Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
It states that "the Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters
and uncountable struggles
across these years [of Communist rule], now include many who see clearly
that freedom, equality, and
human rights are universal values of humankind and that democracy and
constitutional government are the
fundamental framework for protecting these values."
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European Pressphoto Agency
Liu Xia
Mr. Liu is a fearless advocate for these ideas. He dresses plainly, avoids
pretense, and seems to enjoy
demonstrating his belief that truth is more important than tact. He is drawn
to dangerous situations as if he
did not know they were dangerous. When Chinese student protests began in the
spring of 1989—protests
that would come to a head at Tiananmen Square—Mr. Liu, then a visiting
scholar at Columbia University,
flew back to Beijing to join the students and counsel them in nonviolent
protest.
For this the government called him a "black hand" and imprisoned him for 18
months. In 1995, after writing
essays that criticized the Chinese government, he was sentenced to three
years of "re-education through
labor." Mr. Liu was not involved in the original conception or drafting of
Charter 08, but when friends
invited him to join the effort he again chose to do what he thought was
right, despite the obvious dangers.
Few people expected that his 11-year sentence for "subversion," which was
announced on Christmas Day
last year, would be so harsh. Four days later Mr. Liu's lawyers relayed to
the world his reaction:
"The sentence violates the Chinese constitution and international human
rights covenants. It cannot bear
moral scrutiny and will not pass the test of history. I believe that my work
has been just, and that someday
China will be a free and democratic country. . . . I have long been aware
that when an independent
intellectual stands up to an autocratic state, step one toward freedom is
often a step into prison. Now I am
taking that step; and true freedom is that much nearer."
The other organizers of Charter 08 had their homes raided, computers and
notes confiscated and bank
accounts emptied. Many of the original 303 signatories have been watched,
cajoled, threatened and
harassed. But Mr. Liu was the only one sent to prison, and this raises the
question of why the government
chose to focus so intensely on him. It is an old tactic in Chinese Communist
politics to hold up the example
of one person to frighten others, but in this case there seems to have been
another factor at work.
In 2005, China's President Hu Jintao issued a classified report called "
Fight a Smokeless Battle: Keep 'Color
Revolutions' Out of China." The report warned against allowing figures like
Boris Yeltsin, Nelson Mandela,
Lech Walesa or Aung San Suu Kyi to appear in China. It borrowed the Chinese
idiom "blast the head off the
bird that sticks its neck out" to recommend that, when troublemakers appear,
"the big ones" should be
arrested and "the little ones" left alone.
This formula appears to have been put into practice in November 2008.
Shortly after Chinese police
discovered that people were signing Charter 08 online, the Communist Party
Politburo held a meeting at
which Charter 08 was officially declared to be an attempt at "color
revolution." Accordingly, Mr. Liu became
"the big one" to target.
There is irony here. The other "color revolution" leaders named in the Hu
report had strong political
organizations behind them: Mr. Yeltsin was a high-ranking Soviet official,
Mr. Mandela led the African
National Congress, Mr. Walesa led Solidarity, and Ms. Suu Kyi led a
political party that had already won a
national election.
Mr. Liu, by comparison, was a free-floating intellectual. If he turns out to
be a "big one" of the kind Mr. Hu
fears, then Mr. Hu can only blame himself for having made him so. By
awarding him the Peace Prize, the
Nobel Committee and Communist Party have become unwitting partners in
producing what China's
democrats and political dissenters have most needed: a leader of
transcendent moral stature to rally
around.
For two decades China's rulers have sought to position themselves as the
embodiment of "China" and to
channel all nationalist sentiment through them. The Olympics, the World's
Fair now underway in Shanghai,
and the periodic stimulation of anger toward Japan, Tibet and elsewhere all
reveal this pattern.
What Charter 08 and Mr. Liu are saying is, "No, 'China' can be something
different, something better than a
worn-out, old-style authoritarian government." Giving the Peace Prize to Mr.
Liu provides a huge boost to
that new vision of what China can be.
Mr. Link teaches at the University of California, Riverside. He worked with
the drafters of Charter 08 to
translate the document into English. |
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