South China Morning Post:
The thorn digging into Beijing's shoe
The main impact of Liu Xiaobo's Nobel Peace Prize may be to make his countrymen wonder who he is and why he received such an honour
Verna Yu
Oct 15, 2010
Simon Niu, a construction material procurer in Beijing, had never heard of Liu Xiaobo until he learned from the internet that Liu was this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
"I thought it was very strange that it wasn't reported in the media," said Niu, 36. "I guessed that this person must have subversive opinions in the eyes of the authorities."
When the Nobel committee announced in Norway last Friday that Liu had won the prize, news immediately spread across the world - except on the mainland. Internet searches yielded only an angry response from the Foreign Ministry or articles condemning the award as a plot to destabilise China.
Niu said he was angry that the government was trying to hush up the news. "Why is there so much we are not allowed to know? Who is this man? Why is he behind bars? Why kind of person is he? What has he done?" he asked. "To have to go to such a lot of trouble [to hide the news], it just shows the government lacks confidence," he said.
The awarding of the first Nobel prize to a Chinese national under the communist regime will probably cause millions of Chinese like Niu to start asking who Liu is and why he deserves such an honour.
The award serves as an endorsement of Liu's two-decade advocacy of peaceful political reform in the face of government repression and a powerful morale boost for China's democracy movement, which has been largely stalled since the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989.
"Students are going to look up who this guy is," said Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher at New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The decision to jail Liu and make an example of him has effectively turned him into a figurehead of the democratic movement, and Charter 08 has now become the central document for the movement."
Liu was sentenced last year to 11 years in jail for inciting subversion of state power, as he was a key drafter of Charter 08 - the boldest call for democracy, rights and political reform since Tiananmen.
It was believed to be one of the longest sentences handed down on the mainland in a case involving freedom of expression.
The Nobel committee said the severe punishment meted out to him made him "the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China".
Even so, the central government has remained defiant.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman questioned the "true intention" of the award this week and said the nation would not change its one-party political system. The government also called off a planned meeting with the Norwegian fisheries minister, put Liu's wife, Liu Xia , under house arrest and barred European diplomats from visiting her.
Despite the outward stridency, analysts said the award would force top leaders to reflect upon the government's current strategy: for all the money and resources it has spent on silencing Liu Xiaobo and quashing Charter 08, not only has he not been forgotten, but he has become a respected international symbol of peaceful resistance in the face of oppression.
"The top leadership must be rather annoyed and are asking why nobody foresaw this, but we have long predicted this: if you arrested and jailed him, he would definitely get the prize," said Chen Ziming , a fellow Tiananmen activist who the government accused of being the "black hand" behind the pro- democracy movement, and jailed for 13 years.
Analysts said the government's decision to make an example of Liu has backfired at a critical juncture when China, an emerging economic power feared by some countries as a threat, sorely needs respect and a better image in the international arena.
"The leadership have managed to inflict on themselves the very thing they have tried to avoid for the past 20 years, which is to have a figurehead for the democratic movement in China," Bequelin said.
Jean-Philippe Beja, a senior research fellow at the Centre for International Studies and Research at Paris-based Sciences Po, said the jailing and heavy sentence given to Liu and his winning of the Nobel prize have made Charter 08 - originally signed by 303 activists, lawyers and intellectuals - echo around the world.
"From the Communist Party's point of view, that is very disruptive," Beja said.
Indeed, the government appeared rattled by the news of the award by virtue of the actions taken against Liu's wife. Dozens of rights activists and dissidents have also been detained, harassed or questioned by the police since the announcement of the award. Several rights lawyers were harassed, some prevented from leaving home and one detained at a guest house.
Although activists expect the crackdowns to continue for some time, they believe they are likely to be knee-jerk reactions that will not last.
"In the short term, crackdowns are inevitable. They fear that Liu Xiaobo's award will galvanise the grass-roots [activism], but the civil rights movement is not something that the authorities can control," said Ye Du, a Guangzhou-based liberal writer.
Instead, activists say the award has lifted their morale and will help speed up democratisation in the long run.
"The emergence of a spiritual leader in a democratising society is bound to have a catalysing effect, like Nelson Mandela in South Africa and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia," Ye said.
A rights activist based in Sichuan , Chen Wei , said the award would allow more people to understand the spirit of Charter 08 and prompt more to participate in the fight for democracy.
It is unclear how the leadership will respond to international calls for Liu's release and whether it will change the way it handles dissent.
Some believe Liu's prize could lend support to Premier Wen Jiabao's outspoken remarks on the need for political reform in recent months. But given that the top leaders will change in two years, it is unlikely that anybody would want to upset the status quo, Beja said.
"During a succession, everyone holds their cards close to their chests," he said.
Meanwhile, others say the leadership may one day decide, after a recalculation of its own power interests, that keeping Liu in prison represents too much of a liability.
"The Chinese Communist Party calculates such things strictly in terms of one question: what will maximise the strength of the Party's monopoly grip on power?" said Perry Link, a China expert at the University of California, Riverside.
"In the short term, increased repression will be their answer... In the longer term, maybe after a few years but before Liu's sentence is served in full, they may calculate that the costs to their power of the embarrassment of holding a Nobel laureate in jail are greater than the costs of letting one free-thinking intellectual go free."
After finding out that Liu was punished and honoured for his efforts to call for democracy and political reform, Niu said he was glad someone spoke on the behalf of millions of others who, like himself, do not have the courage to stand up for themselves.
"In China, lots of people curse the system every day, but we have no influence and we don't have any hope," he said. "Now I have more of an idea why he deserved the prize."
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