Sunday 10 October 2010

Freedom is an obscenity


Does anyone know the definition of ‘obscenity’ in China, or rather how the Chinese government defines ‘obscenity’? No? Well, let me tell you: it’s article 35 of the country’s constitution, the passage in this noble document where it is clearly stated that the “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.”

Liu Xiaobo is clearly a very simple man, a very trusting man, because he took this declaration seriously, which is why he was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment last Christmas for ‘subversion’, namely insisting that the citizens of China should enjoy the rights set out in article 35, not just in theory but in practice. For his courage, or his naivety, I can’t be sure which, he has now been awarded with the Nobel Prize for Peace, dismissed by the Chinese government as an “obscenity.”

I actually thought the Nobel committee a bit of a joke especially after their condescending and inverted racism in awarding this prize last year to Barack Obama for no better reason than he was a Black Man in the White House. He is, at least in my estimation, also quite a stupid man, a man with little tactical or political sense. A shrewder individual would have rejected the award, saying that they had done nothing as yet to deserve it, thereby gaining merit by honesty. Liu, in contrast, does deserve it, something Obama himself has recognised, saying that his sacrifice was much greater; that he had sacrificed his freedom for his beliefs.

Not only is the Chinese government ignorant of its own basic law but it is ignorant of how things work in the world beyond their stupid tyranny. The Nobel Committee sits in Norway so, the logic goes in Beijing, the Norwegian government is clearly responsible for this award. Threats have now been issued by the Chinese foreign ministry, saying that the Nobel decision could ‘damage’ relations between the two countries, on the verge of concluding a new trade deal. I suppose the idea that there are independent sources of thought beyond government is yet another ‘obscenity’.

The paradox is that Liu is virtually unknown in his native land, where his struggle and his martyrdom remain unreported. I have little doubt that, given their past history, most Chinese people have more interest in a decent and tolerable life than human rights, than in the noble causes that Liu has embraced. His savage punishment for believing in a principle of freedom is a measure of the government’s insecurity, a measure of how much they fear their own people or any challenge mounted to the Communist Party’s monopoly of power. What they cannot understand is that it is not the demand for freedom that would upset China’s stability but their own practical and moral corruption, their own political obscenity.

23 comments:

  1. Very well said. Ironically both the Stalinist constitution and the 1977 Constitution of the USSR had some very liberal aspects and dimensions to them--but a written constitution is just another document to hide behind--a way to obfuscate responsibility. Just as Robespiere or Obama for that matter. An unwritten constitution holds people to account far more--it reveals people not to be poor enforcers of law but men and women with wicked ideals....does it not Anthony Charles Lynton Blair?
    Let me just sat though--I admire the intelligence and history of the Chinese people--they were a culture of literacy and advanced Government whilst the rest of the world--particularly the Jewish and proto-Christian worlds were playing with rocks or hallucinating.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There are signs that things are changing. In what direction, I'd not be happy to guess, but the waves of monied middle-class youth going back to China back from overseas study will affect some sort of change to the political nervous system of China.
    I would like to hope that the change will be a straightforwardly liberal and democratic one, but I know better than to assume it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, Adam. The Stalin Constitution of 1936 was said to be the most liberal in the world, all the greater in contast to what was happening at the time.

    ReplyDelete
  4. And yet Nick(the last time I heard) wanted a written constitution. He had Stalin can have it. I'll take the intelligent option.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Invictus, I would like to hope so also. I never assume.

    ReplyDelete
  6. China is comming around,they will be thoroughly corrupt capitalists soon enough. They like the money.

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Invictus: I'm not so sure. Here at Georgia Tech we have a lot of Chinese students, and they seem strangely cold and unimpressed by American "freedom." Honestly, they don't really seem to care much. The Iranians on the other hand do seem to care. If they say there is something they would miss about America, it's far more likely the beauty of the American landscape and the openness of American lands than any kind of freedom. The rare Chinese who truly yearn for freedom usually move to America or Canada, and STAY, just as the Hong Kong and Macau Chinese in many cases left their native city for Vancouver, British Columbia.

    I hate to say it, but I almost wonder if a little bit of Darwinism is at work here, with the people who had the freedom itch either coming to America over a hundred years ago or Hong Kong slightly more recently or Canada even more recently or being slowly killed off by assorted oppressive governments and ill-fated attempts at democracy. Homo Chinanus.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Ana,

    Very interesting post, as usual.

    Your writing reminds me of the situation in my country (Indonesia) before May 1998.

    Although our constitution protected freedom of expression since independence in 1945, but authoritarian regimes would always prevent citizens from doing so. Many newspapers and magazines were banned.

    ReplyDelete
  9. The Nobel Prize is a very odd institution with a peculiar agenda. I am not sure what being noticed by the Oslo committee really signals - especially their political awards.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Anthony, they certainly do. The Chinese are possibly the most commercially minded people in the world. Never was a community less suited to the idiocies of communism.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Harry, yes, hypocrisy is always at the heart of dictatorship.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Calvin, I suppose it depends really. On this occasion they got it right, though other than embarass the Chinese governmemt on the international stage it's not likely to achieve that much in terms of practical politics. As I say, Liu is virtually unknown in China.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Well done, Ana!
    China has a long/rich history for sure, but there is something deadly missing through thousands years of cultural development: the concept of "justice", "truth", and "democracy" of course. Even today Chinese people are still not so fond of these notions. That makes Chinese people incredibly "understanding" - they really can understand why it is so necessary to put poeple like Liu in jail.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Chinese Law: more like guidelines . . .

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thanks, yun yi. :-) I understand exactly what you are saying. It's interesting, though, that the government still sees fit at least to make a nod towards these universal ideals in the constitution, a contradiction worth exploiting.

    ReplyDelete
  16. yes, ana, you mentioned something important.
    i think, even though many chinese people know those concepts/ideals are all charming but, the fear of crash of this big "center kingdom" (or empire) is more than any other concerns. "blood is thicker than water", ... and as matter of fact, chinese people always have "love and hate" relationship toward all these import ideologys - when they felt hurt from their own government, they embrace those ideas; but when they felt those ideas conflict with that "great chinese tradition", they hate them.

    ReplyDelete
  17. @ana: Not only that, but some embrace of "ideals" may partially be for foreign policy as well, more with the Soviet Union way back when (skies weren't always calm over the Amur River) than the United States.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Ana, I just translated another batch:
    http://humanwithoutgod.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-quotes-by-liu-xiaobo.html

    so all of the 2 posts of quotes are from the introduction of this book. together they may create a general impression about what this gigantic work is about.
    feel free to post in your blog and to point out my english errors, for you possess such excellency in english. i am glad i could do this. really. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  19. Thanks, my dear friend. I would not dream of changing a word.

    ReplyDelete