On the eve of the ceremony to mark the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, our International Editor, Lindsey Hilsum, wonders what the Chinese really think about the award.
The Chinese government has not held back its anger about the award of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to the imprisoned dissident writer Liu Xiaobo. Government spokespeople and official newspapers have described it variously as an obscenity, a farce, a disgrace, a western conspiracy and an example of China-bashing.
The other week, I asked a senior Chinese official why they were making such a fuss, thus flamming up the story and drawing ever more attention. “It shows a lack of respect for our legal system, a lack of respect for China,” he said. He seemed pretty angry.
Today I asked the exiled mathematician Yang Jianli, who’s here in Oslo at the request of Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo’s wife, why the government is so rattled.
“The Chinese government considers LXB as a dangerous person because this gentleman represents universal values that the Chinese people have begun to embrace,” he said.
“He represents the wish of the people, which has long been disregarded by this regime. That’s why anything like this is seen as a threat to the Chinese government, as a challenge to its grip on power.”
He echoed the words of a dissident still in China who I communicated with at the weekend. (I won’t give her name or say how we spoke.) When I said I was coming to Oslo, she said: “You’ll be there for the important moment for the Chinese people.”
So who does speak for the Chinese people? The Communist Party? Or a small group of dissident intellectuals? The answer is that as long as there’s no freedom of speech in China, we can’t possibly know. Many Chinese are entirely unaware of Liu Xiaobo’s writings, because he hasn’t been allowed to publish in China since 1989.
Many people I’ve met in China support the government policies which have brought “reform and opening up” and allowed tremendous economic progress. Their parents suffered during the Cultural Revolution. Their grandparents starved during the Great Leap Forward. Things are better today than ever before in living memory, and probably more than a century.
But people do get angry about corruption and the abuse of power by local officials. And I’ve met plenty of poor Chinese who feel they haven’t benefitted from the economic boom, because their land has been confiscated, or their river polluted.
So we go round in a circle. What gives an unelected government legitimacy – even if it has brought economic progress? But how can a little-known group of intellectuals calling for democracy and freedom claim to speak for the Chinese people? Hard to say – until the Chinese people get freedom of speech and democracy when they’ll be able to tell us themselves.