“Where is China heading in the twenty-first century?” asks the remarkable document which brought the Chinese intellectual and political activist Liu Xiaobo to worldwide prominence in 2008. His Nobel Peace Prize now makes the subsequent questions in Charter 08 seem eerily prescient, and doubly shaming for the government which imprisoned him on charges of ‘subverting state power’: “Will it continue with ‘modernization’ under authoritarian rule, or will it embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilized nations, and build a democratic system? There can be no avoiding these questions.”
Charter 08 rudely awoke the Chinese Politburo from its post-Tiananmen slumber. Overnight it became impossible to pretend that all was well in the People’s Republic. But the country’s leaders still tried their best. Mr Liu was detained, confined in suitably squalid and intimidating conditions, and jailed for 11 years (a sentence which may be related to the number of Chinese characters used to write the Charter). His sentence was handed down on Christmas Day 2009, in the hope that it would be lost in news coverage in the West. Silenced for a decade, he was meant to become a living rebuke to one of the Charter’s most subversive ideals, namely that China “should end the practice of viewing words as crimes.” Beijing’s bureaucrats congratulated themselves for the ease with which they had shuffled Mr Liu and his Quixotic ideas offstage. A political crisis seemed to have been averted. Now they know better.
Instead of disappearing into the dustbin of history, Mr Liu has reminded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that the ghosts of Tiananmen Square cannot be exorcised by censorship alone. While Liu has become a sort of Banquo’s ghost to Beijing’s Macbeth, what really terrifies the CCP leadership is how Charter 08 has quickened the country’s appetite for democratic freedoms. Most people the West have heard about the CCP’s denunciation of the Nobel Committee and of its impetuous threat to use sanctions against Norway, but more important news from within China has received much less attention. Shortly after Mr Liu’s prize was announced, a group of retired CCP officials published an open letter that called on the government to end censorship and restore freedom of speech throughout the country. Although electronic versions of the letter were quickly “harmonized” out of China’s cyberspace, its contents will likely trouble the sleep of senior party members for quite some time. Wittily alluding to Beijing’s repeated assertions that China will never again suffer at the hands of foreigners, the letter declares that “We have for 61 years ‘served as master’ in the name of the citizens of the People’s Republic of China. But the freedom of speech and of the press we now enjoy is inferior even to that of Hong Kong before its return to Chinese sovereignty…” When the customarily unanimous party faithful are willing to break ranks and make a statement like this, Mr Liu and his kind may well turn out to be the least of the CCP’s worries.
In August, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao made a speech which openly acknowledged the need for political reform in China. In September he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that “the people’s wishes for, and needs for, democracy and freedom are irresistible.” Again, it is clear that when one of the central propositions from a “subversive” manifesto is being openly advocated, less than two years later, by the Premier of an authoritarian government, that Charter 08 and its thousands of supporters are winning the battle of ideas over China’s political future. What remains to be seen is whether the CCP is prepared to accommodate the Charter’s vision of political reform or if hardliners will win the internal power struggle, and reprise the repression of Tiananmen Square.
In retrospect Beijing should have realized much earlier that it had picked the wrong target when it went after Mr Liu. At his trial in 2009 he refused to yield any ground whatsoever to the state prosecutors. Describing the case against him as “a typical example of criminalizing speech, a continuation of the ancient practice of literary inquisition” he warned the court that “[this] practice should be morally condemned and investigated as a violation of the Constitution.” He pointed out that, “In expressing alternative political views I am exercising the right to free speech conferred on me by the Chinese Constitution. Not only can the government not restrict or arbitrarily deprive me of this right; rather, the state must respect it and guarantee it by law.” He then went on to summarize his vision free speech in 24 Chinese characters: “Say all you know and say it without reserve. Blame not the speaker but heed what you hear. Correct the mistakes you made and guard against those you did not.” Confucius himself could not put the idea more succinctly. Suddenly, Beijing is finding out, in the most humiliating fashion, that even in a prison cell Mr Liu is having the last laugh. He has spoken unreservedly and their blame and criticism has fallen on deaf ears. Shouldn’t he be released from prison to spare the People’s Republic further embarrassment in this matter? Another unavoidable question which the Government of China would do well to answer sooner rather than later.
