Hidden Harmonies China Blog

Do supporters of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for?

Barry Sautman
Associate Professor
Division of Social Science
Hong Kong University of Science Technology

Yan Hairong
Anthropologist
Department of Applied Social Sciences
Hong Kong Polytechnic University

In recent weeks, Nobel prizewinner Liu Xiaobo’s politics have been reduced to a story of a heroic individual who upholds human rights and democracy. His views are largely omitted to avoid a discussion about them, resulting in a one-sided debate. Within three weeks, in Hong Kong, for example, more than 500 articles were published about Liu, of which only 10 were critical of the man or peace prize.

In China, before the award, most people neither knew nor cared about Liu, while, according to Andrew Jacobs, writing in the International Herald Tribune, an “official survey of university students taken since the prize was awarded found that 85% said they knew nothing about Mr Liu and Charter ’08.” A Norwegian Sinologist has elicited comments from Chinese people and indicated that younger Chinese still do not care about Liu. Older Chinese intellectuals are interested in discussing the award, but many do not think Liu is an appropriate recipient. Read more…

The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize award to Liu Xiaobo yesterday at Oslo made headlines in the West, and as expected, the Western media continued the same narrative. As I was hearing Thorbjorn Jagland over the radio presenting the award and then followed by Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann’s reading aloud Liu’s statements (written two days prior to his 11-year sentencing), I was imagining what runs through a typical Westerner’s mind when they hear this presentation. No doubt, Liu would seem like an angelic figure, who wants nothing but the most fundamental things a human desires for all the 1.3 billion Chinese, and for that, he was jailed to 11 years. According to Ullmann’s utterances, there could not be a soul on this planet more gracious and peace loving. For that, Liu deserves the worthy Nobel Peace Prize.

If you have had not already read our two recent posts on this very topic, I recommend resuming this post after doing so. In, “The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo and what it means to the Chinese” we discussed how the Chinese views Liu and what he was actually convicted for. For a better understanding of Liu’s politics, Barry Sautman (a political scientist and lawyer at Hong Kong University of Science & Technology) and Yan Hairong (an anthropologist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University), did a lot of research to come to this conclusion: “Liu Xiaobo Deserves an Ig Nobel Peace Prize.”
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“Liu Xiaobo Deserves an Ig Nobel Peace Prize” is a recent reaction from Barry Sautman (a political scientist and lawyer at Hong Kong University of Science & Technology) and Yan Hairong (an anthropologist at Hong Kong Polytechnic University) on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. Roland Song’s ESWN (東南西北) has also brought this to his readers attention. No doubt, this controversy is a huge stir in the West. Here is a copy of it forwarded to this mailing list by a David Thorstad with his short introduction:

Those who gave the Nobel Peace Price to a Chinese dissident explain that peace and human rights are inseparable. Yet the country that proclaims the loudest its attachment to human rights (the United States) is also the one that has the most soldiers in other countries and wages the most wars.
David

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The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize has just been awarded to Liu Xiabo, and according to the Nobel committee, the key reason was “for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”. Of course, the Western media is using this occasion to lambaste the Chinese government. They are parroting the anti-China positions from all the die-hard “human rights” activists throughout the West. (See here, here, and here.) They also compare Liu Xiaobo’s case to that of Carl von Ossietzky who won the same prize in 1935 for opposing Hitler. This has gone too far, and it’s about time the Chinese perspective be heard.

Really, it is amazing there is an urge within the West to compare China to that of Hitler Germany. Needless to say, I am not going to waste any breath arguing how stupid that is.
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