China created a problem for itself with Liu Xiaobo. That much is obvious after the Chinese dissident won the Nobel Peace Prize today for his peaceful calls for democracy in his country. But what should be even more obvious is that it was not the much-reported Chinese threat of damaged relations with Norway that created this problem. It was sending a man to prison for 11 years for peacefully advocating democracy in his country. [Read here for what Liu Xiaobo stands for, in his own words before his sentencing; then read here for the Chinese court's verdict and sentencing of Liu.]
Many of us around the world, including perhaps even members of the Nobel committee, have shown something akin to tolerance for China’s authoritarian instincts over the last decade, as the memories of Tiananmen Square faded and the era of the Chinese boom dawned. Many Chinese dissidents you have never heard of have been locked away for several years at a time for peaceful, noble and brave actions, while the freer world, so busy engaging with China, looks the other way or, at most, asks the government quietly and meekly to do better. Last year’s decision by Google to end self-censorship in China was the exception that proves the rule, so newsworthy because it was so jolting from the status quo.
Yet the status quo endures, day after day. We can become desensitized by the relentlessness of everyday authoritarianism. Even the most disproportionate punishments, though briefly shocking enough to make headlines, end up being remembered only by a small number. At this moment, a lawyer named Gao Zhisheng is missing somewhere in the dark recesses of China’s security apparatus — he was a bigger name for a while, a rumored Nobel contender himself, when he was missing for much of last year, then resurfaced this year a near-broken man. Now he is gone again, certainly no better off, and forgotten to much of the world, much less to the Chinese people, many of whom have never heard of him.
This has been the unfortunate fate of most Chinese dissidents, to be remembered by only a few and known to very few of their own countrymen. Chinese writer Zha Jianying wrote movingly of this in a 2007 New Yorker article about her imprisoned dissident brother Zha Jianguo, posing the existential question of what good her brother’s sacrifice has done.
This Nobel Peace Prize helps answer that existential question. It has been awarded to one man, and his wife, Liu Xia, is rightfully proud of her husband. She will never have to worry that her husband will be forgotten, and she knows that many around the world and some within her country will learn what he stands for. But the award also confers a proud legacy to so many other Chinese dissidents who have been forgotten. More people around the world and inside China will know what they all stand for, and for a time will remember them and their cause a little better. That is one deeper meaning of this prize.
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