In the International Herald Tribune, Fang Lizhi points to the experience of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo over the last 20 years as “evidence on its own to demolish any idea that democracy will automatically emerge as a result of growing prosperity” in China.
According to human rights organizations, there are about 1,400 people political, religious and “conscience” prisoners in prison or labor camps across China. Their “crimes” have included membership in underground political or religious groups, independent trade unions and nongovernmental organizations, or they have been arrested for participating in strikes or demonstrations and have publicly expressed dissenting political opinions.
This undeniable reality ought to be a wake up call to anyone who still believes the autocratic rulers of China will alter their disregard of human rights just because the country is richer. Regardless of how widely China’s leaders have opened its markets to the outside world, they have not retreated even half a step from their repressive political creed.
On the contrary, China’s dictators have become even more contemptuous of the value of universal human rights. In the decade after Tiananmen, the Communist government released 100 political prisoners in order to improve its image. Since 2000, as the Chinese economy grew stronger and stronger and the pressure from the international community diminished, the government has returned to hard-line repression.
Fang Lizhi, in the article “Liu Xiaobo and Illusions About China,” says Liu Xiaobo’s role in the publication of Charter 08 led to more trouble. Little wonder why. Here’s a line from the text:
… we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization. This must change, truly it must. The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer.
The social strain is beginning to tell. In “How China is Weaker than it Looks,” Kerry Brown on The Diplomat writes:
… success means that Communist Party leaders once certain that they’d have two or three decades more of economic reforms to go before getting down to political changes have found themselves confronted with the need to do something far more quickly than expected.
China is on target to become a middle income country by as early as 2020. But while this transition may be welcome, it’s also a stage in any country’s development when various elites—whether business or political—will likely start to experience far sharper disagreements with each other. Lawyers and civil society groups, as the colour revolutions in the former Soviet bloc states show, start to gain much greater social traction, while entities that look and act like an authentic political opposition start to appear.
Acton has recently expanded the Chinese language area of its website. The section includes Acton’s Core Principles and biographical information on Lord Acton.
Lord Acton wrote, “Political atheism: End justifies the means. This is still the most widespread of all the opinions inimical to liberty.” Liu Xiaobo would understand.
