Yesterday the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to an empty chair in Oslo. Its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, who remains, in the words of the Norwegian Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, “in isolation in a prison in northeast China,” became the fifth of China’s Nobel laureates to be either jailed or in exile when chosen for the prize. It is darkly ironic that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should silence its leading free speech activist in an attempt to limit foreign criticism, but this Quixotic measure is likely to prove a fool’s errand. Before long Beijing will realize, as all censors do, that no government, however resolute, can fool all of the people all of the time. In fact, as the official citation acknowledged, Liu’s continued detention is proof enough “that the award was necessary and appropriate.”
Despite Beijing’s best efforts to scuttle the award pre-emptively, the Nobel has brought worldwide attention to the life and work which Liu and other activists have continued to press for democracy in the bleak post-Tiananmen years. The PRC’s ham-fisted behaviour throughout this period has provided ample corroboration (not that much was needed) that 20 years after Tiananmen China’s much-vaunted reforms have made little difference to a political elite with totalitarian instincts. All of this is presciently stated in the foreword to Charter 08, the document which led to Liu’s arrest: “The Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles [for a century] now include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values …[and by] departing from these values, the Chinese government’s approach to “modernization” has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse.”
One part of the Nobel citation directly addresses Beijing’s hypersensitivity to criticism, in it the Nobel Committee states that its ”intention has been to say something about the relationship between human rights, democracy and peace . . . to remind the world that the rights so widely enjoyed today were fought for and won by persons who took great risks.”
To this rather mild rebuke, the Nobel Committee might have added the observation that many advancements in human rights have been accelerated by exactly the sort of political myopia which Beijing is displaying. When, for instance, the English abolitionists realized that their government had no serious intention of advancing emancipation, they took matters into their own hands with several very modern strategies. They sent petitions to parliament which contained more names than the number of Englishmen legally permitted to vote. They introduced the idea of a consumer boycott and made unsweetened tea fashionable (since it was not tainted with the moral opprobrium of slave-produced sugar). They named and shamed the Church of England which continued not only to own slaves but to brand them with the word ”SOCIETY.” With Tea Party zeal the abolitionists launched an all-out assault on their unresponsive state. Westminster won most of the ensuing battles but it was always doomed to lose the war. Beijing should pay closer attention to this part of British history for its current dispensation is similarly doomed. The decision to keep Liu Xiaobo in prison, and to continue a crackdown on other democracy activists is a short-term victory that will have disastrous long-term results.
In the closing part of its citation, the Nobel Committee cautions Beijing that “those who fear technological advances have every reason to fear the future.
Information technology cannot be abolished. It will continue to open societies.” Similar remarks in a 1993 speech cost the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch several lost years and more than $1billion in useless investments when he tried to gain a foothold in China. The Murdoch fiasco taught China that Western businesses can often be manipulated for long periods with the right sorts of carrots and sticks. But global public opinion is less amenable to this game. In fact large parts of the developed world don’t play it at all. With respect to Liu Xiaobo, no amount of grandstanding will tip the balance of public opinion in Beijing’s favour. Liu’s imprisonment is China’s shame and this shame will only be dispelled when Beijing comes to its senses and sets him free.
