Man Feared by China's Communist Regime

by Seth Mandel
October 13, 2010

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1029/man-feared-by-china-communist-regime

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize went to U.S. President Barack Obama, who had been in office for just ten days when he was nominated. The decision stunned both Obama's supporters and detractors, and drained the award of even more of its credibility--much of which was already gone.

There of course was no dearth of good candidates for the award. The proper move--not to mention the historically poignant choice--would have been to award the prize to one of China's many dissidents. Not only should such dissidents be recognized, but last year was the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

President Obama was forced to give an awkward acceptance speech, knowing that many worthy nominees were languishing in archaic, dank prisons in dark corners of the world to which Obama hadn't ever given much thought.

The prize has often gone to men who have wreaked havoc on the global community, either terrorizing populations--Yasser Arafat--or giving aid, comfort, and protection to such tyrants--Jimmy Carter. But some years the Norwegian Nobel Committee gets it right. This is one of those years.

The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient is Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The award to Liu throws a rock through the stained-glass window of China's carefully crafted image.

"Who is he? To ask the question (and the questions that inevitably follow) is like pulling on a frayed thread in the otherwise seamless fabric that is supposed to be modern, confident and ascendant China," wrote Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal.

Liu is one of tens of thousands of political prisoners in the People's Republic. His most recent crime, and the reason he was sentenced to eleven years in prison, is for sponsoring Charter 08, in December 2008. A manifesto of political liberty and equality, Charter 08 reads in part:

"China, as a great nation of the world, one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and a member of the Human Rights Council, should contribute to peace for humankind and progress in human rights. But to people's regret, among the great nations of the world, China, alone, still clings to an authoritarian political way of life. As a result, it has caused an unbroken chain of human rights disasters and social crises, held back the development of the Chinese people, and hindered the progress of human civilization. This situation must change! The reform of political democratization can no longer be delayed."

That's the charter's conclusion. But along the way, the charter calls for change in China's political culture built around the following concepts: Freedom, human rights, equality, republicanism, democracy, and constitutionalism.

Liu was jailed for his role in the Tiananmen protests, and dedicated his Peace Prize to those who perished in the massacre. But his efforts, his charter, his Nobel, and even the massacre itself are proof of the strength of China's dissidents and the weakness of the regime.

In January of this year I wrote about Liu's case and what it meant for China's relationship with the West. Of the day of Liu's arrest and his conviction the very next day, I wrote: "In those two days, the point was made--talk of democratization and moral assimilation by repressive, authoritarian regimes is for Western ears only. And the practice has become routine."

The threat, I wrote, was that we in the West had been pursuing a policy of Chinese "integration" only for that process to be turned back on us. Since the presidency of Bill Clinton, the U.S. and other nations have put China's integration into the global economy at the top of the list of priorities--despite the fact of China's brutally repressive, authoritarian national leadership.

The logic was that by integrating China into the broader economy, the forces of market liberalization would take hold, putting China on a path similar to those tread by democracies. Political liberalization, the thinking went, would soon follow economic liberalization.

Flawed as it might have been, many willingly bought into this line of thinking. James Mann, a scholar-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, attempted to project a wake-up call with his book The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy to China.

"Is the United States now integrating China into a new international economic order based upon free market principles?" Mann writes. "Or, on the other hand, is China now integrating the United States into a new international political order where democracy is no longer favored and where a government's continuing eradication of all organized political opposition is accepted or ignored?"

In other words, China pulled the West into a world of international finance with no moral strings attached. The West's strategy failed. But there is one way that can still chip away at China's communist armor--the way of Liu Xiaobo.

Despite China's bullying, Liu won. Despite China's media blackout, Liu won. China fills its prisons and its labor camps with people like Liu--but still Liu won. Late last month China warned the Nobel Committee that giving the prize to a Chinese dissident would be considered "an unfriendly action that would have negative consequences for the relationship between Norway and China." And yet, Liu won.

So the lesson to be learned from this year's Nobel Peace Prize is not submission to China's delinquency, but rather the way the words of one man can shake the foundation of the communist tyrants.

"How powerful can a state be," Stephens asked, "if it is terrified of a single man?

Seth Mandel is the USA Correspondent of Weekly Blitz based in Washington DC

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