China Should Embrace Liu Xiaobo, Even in Mao´s Spirit
Wendy Liu
January 22, 2010
A veteran China watcher is allegedly to have said this once, "China ultimately disappoints." I have resisted using this quote for as long as I could over the years, until now. By sentencing dissident Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison, China, or rather the Chinese communist party/government, truly ultimately disappointed. It was especially disappointing for people like myself who had always stood ready to cheer for all of China´s achievement and give Beijing all the benefit of the doubt.
What was as disappointing was the in-your-face manner in which the Chinese government carried out Liu Xiaobo´s sentencing, on Christmas day, amidst outcries from around the world, and then followed up with its characteristic media blackout.
What was Liu Xiaobo jailed for? He wrote articles and co-authored Charter 08 calling for a democratic China, true rights for its people, and the removal from the country´s criminal code "subversion" crime that he himself was charged with.
But the Chinese government, having sworn off any Western political models for China, is entrenched in its rejection of any international criticism of the case as meddling. Also far from being done, it has detained another signer of Charter 08 and admitted the "missing" of a rights lawyer. Pleading or reasoning with the Chinese government in universal human rights terms seems to only fall on deaf ears.
Well then, I would like to challenge them on their own terms. Since the Chinese Communist Party still claims in its constitution Mao Zedong Thought, along with Marxism, Leninism and Deng Xiaoping Theory, as its guidance, here is a piece of Mao Thought for them.
In a statement issued back in 1937 from his base Yan´an titled "The Tasks of the Chinese Communist Party During the War of Resistance against Japan," Mao wrote:
"To fight the Japanese, we need national peace and unity. Without democracy and freedom, we cannot maintain peace or strengthen unity…"
"China must start immediately a democratic reform in two ways: One, transform the one-party, one-class, reactionary and dictatorial system of the Nationalist Party into a multi-party, multi-class, cooperative and democratic system … Two, people´s freedom of speech, assembly and association. Without such freedom, there won´t be a democratic reform of the political system or mobilization of the people to fight the Japanese and achieve victory in defending the motherland and recovering lost territory..."
Transform a one-party dictatorial system into a multi-party democratic system??? Freedom of speech, assembly and association??? What a shock! Mao and his comrades wanted for China then what Liu Xiaobo and his fellow dissidents want for China today? The Chinese Communist Party was fighting with wars then for what Liu Xiaobo and his fellow dissidents are fighting with pens for today?
It is ironic that the communists in power today forgot that they were once the dissidents under the Nationalist government, harassed, jailed and killed for their ideas of a new China of freedom and democracy.
It is more ironic that the one-party dictatorial system of the Nationalist Party that Mao and his comrades fought to change, and succeeded, became the one party dictatorial system of the Communist Party.
It is most ironic that Ma Ying-Jeou, chairman of the same Nationalist Party and president of Taiwan, a democracy today, came out commenting on Liu Xiaobo´s jailing and called on Beijing to show "maximum tolerance to those who express their views peacefully."
But the jailing of Liu Xiaobo didn´t remind me only of Mao´s writings about freedom and democracy for China, it also brought back a famous Mao phrase: paper tiger. Even though Mao used the term to describe all reactionaries as well as the U.S. in an interview in 1946, also in Yan´an, with the American journalist Anna Louise Strong, it can be any individual or group that is strong on the outside but weak on the inside.
As a ruling party with a membership of 75 million strong and presiding over a rising superpower like China, the Chinese Communist Party should have all the confidence in the world. The last image one would associate it with should be that of a paper tiger. Yet, that is the image, in Mao´s very words, that came to mind when a party-controlled court tried behind the closed door and then sentenced to long imprisonment someone like Liu Xiaobo, a bespectacled, frail-looking intellectual with nothing but some different views.
Why?
What was as disappointing was the in-your-face manner in which the Chinese government carried out Liu Xiaobo´s sentencing, on Christmas day, amidst outcries from around the world, and then followed up with its characteristic media blackout.
What was Liu Xiaobo jailed for? He wrote articles and co-authored Charter 08 calling for a democratic China, true rights for its people, and the removal from the country´s criminal code "subversion" crime that he himself was charged with.
But the Chinese government, having sworn off any Western political models for China, is entrenched in its rejection of any international criticism of the case as meddling. Also far from being done, it has detained another signer of Charter 08 and admitted the "missing" of a rights lawyer. Pleading or reasoning with the Chinese government in universal human rights terms seems to only fall on deaf ears.
Well then, I would like to challenge them on their own terms. Since the Chinese Communist Party still claims in its constitution Mao Zedong Thought, along with Marxism, Leninism and Deng Xiaoping Theory, as its guidance, here is a piece of Mao Thought for them.
In a statement issued back in 1937 from his base Yan´an titled "The Tasks of the Chinese Communist Party During the War of Resistance against Japan," Mao wrote:
"To fight the Japanese, we need national peace and unity. Without democracy and freedom, we cannot maintain peace or strengthen unity…"
"China must start immediately a democratic reform in two ways: One, transform the one-party, one-class, reactionary and dictatorial system of the Nationalist Party into a multi-party, multi-class, cooperative and democratic system … Two, people´s freedom of speech, assembly and association. Without such freedom, there won´t be a democratic reform of the political system or mobilization of the people to fight the Japanese and achieve victory in defending the motherland and recovering lost territory..."
Transform a one-party dictatorial system into a multi-party democratic system??? Freedom of speech, assembly and association??? What a shock! Mao and his comrades wanted for China then what Liu Xiaobo and his fellow dissidents want for China today? The Chinese Communist Party was fighting with wars then for what Liu Xiaobo and his fellow dissidents are fighting with pens for today?
It is ironic that the communists in power today forgot that they were once the dissidents under the Nationalist government, harassed, jailed and killed for their ideas of a new China of freedom and democracy.
It is more ironic that the one-party dictatorial system of the Nationalist Party that Mao and his comrades fought to change, and succeeded, became the one party dictatorial system of the Communist Party.
It is most ironic that Ma Ying-Jeou, chairman of the same Nationalist Party and president of Taiwan, a democracy today, came out commenting on Liu Xiaobo´s jailing and called on Beijing to show "maximum tolerance to those who express their views peacefully."
But the jailing of Liu Xiaobo didn´t remind me only of Mao´s writings about freedom and democracy for China, it also brought back a famous Mao phrase: paper tiger. Even though Mao used the term to describe all reactionaries as well as the U.S. in an interview in 1946, also in Yan´an, with the American journalist Anna Louise Strong, it can be any individual or group that is strong on the outside but weak on the inside.
As a ruling party with a membership of 75 million strong and presiding over a rising superpower like China, the Chinese Communist Party should have all the confidence in the world. The last image one would associate it with should be that of a paper tiger. Yet, that is the image, in Mao´s very words, that came to mind when a party-controlled court tried behind the closed door and then sentenced to long imprisonment someone like Liu Xiaobo, a bespectacled, frail-looking intellectual with nothing but some different views.
Why?
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