Confidante reflects on Nobel laureate's passion to awaken
China's intellectuals
I first met Liu Xiaobo in Beijing in 1987. I was 23,
working as a translator at the Beijing Foreign Languages Press and writing
freelance articles for Hong Kong-based Asiaweek magazine. Liu, almost a decade
my senior, had just begun a PhD program in comparative literature at Beijing
Normal University.
The future Nobel Peace Prize laureate was in the process
of taking the literary worlds of Beijing, and of China, by storm. He had just
published his groundbreaking first book, "Critique of Choices: Dialogue
with Li Zehou."
Liu's simple, eloquent argument was that China's
intellectuals had for centuries compromised so much to curry political favor
with the authorities of the day that they had lost their independence. The book
included the scandalous statement, "China would benefit from 300 years of
colonization by the West." This was not welcomed by establishment
intellectuals or Beijing's communist rulers.
Liu did not mean his statement literally. Rather, he meant
that Chinese intellectuals needed to recover from the damage inflicted by
centuries of authoritarian rule, straighten their backs and reclaim their
intellectual independence and integrity. But his critics seized on the remark
as evidence of his "reactionary" nature.
Liu did not shrink from these attacks. Instead he fought
back in print, publishing the follow-up book, "Aesthetics and Human
Freedom," and then five more in quick succession.
He wasn't a typical effete, Confucian scholar. He was a
guy's guy. He drank, chain-smoked, and told bawdy political jokes. He was a
character straight out of the 1919 May Fourth New Culture Movement. But he
gored too many political oxen with his iconoclasm and earned establishment
intellectuals' strong enmity.
With fellow activist-writers Duo Duo, Bei Ling, Mang Ke
and others, he formed a literary salon that I reported on for Asiaweek. They
gathered weekly at Beijing Foreign Studies University, then retired to neighborhood
restaurants to drink lukewarm Yanjing beer, smoke and debate current political
events, the course of economic reforms, traditional philosophy and history
until the wee hours.
This was my graduate school. I had been living in Beijing
for only a few years, so there was much I didn't understand. But because I was
a foreigner, there was no such thing as a dumb question, and Liu treated me
like a little brother.
He was a real Renaissance man. He read voraciously, from
the Chinese classics to Schopenhauer, and would quote texts from memory as we
bicycled through Beijing's back alleys, passionately discussing the fate of
China.
His critics did not appreciate how Liu wielded ironic
humor to play down how passionately he cared about his country. "I'll never
let fear of criticism or punishment stifle my speaking out, and I'll struggle
for the right of others to free expression, even if their views don't agree
with mine," he said one evening. "That's the price of freedom."
If only he knew how high a cost he would pay for his ideals.
With his literary reputation soaring, in 1988 Liu accepted
an invitation to teach at Columbia University. Reunited there with fellow
Beijing political activist Hu Ping, poets Jiang He and Bei Ling, and artists Ai
Weiwei and Yan Li, the group continued their Beijing salon in New York City,
debating how best to continue their work when they returned home.
When student protests broke out in Beijing in 1989, Liu
watched television day and night. He saw millions take to the streets to demonstrate
for a better future. The students were so sincere, their idealism so moving. He
felt he had to go back to Beijing to be with them.
Liu purchased a one-way ticket, paying cash so he couldn't
change his mind. "I'm frightened, but can't sit in New York while my
compatriots need me," he said. "Haven't I been preparing for this
moment all my life?"
Liu didn't know if he would be arrested upon arrival in
Beijing, but the authorities had bigger concerns. He made it to Tiananmen
Square and spent weeks living in a tent and standing shoulder to shoulder with
his former students, emerging as the chief spokesperson for the protesters in
the final days before June 4.
He stood his ground the night of the massacre, ultimately
negotiating with martial law troops for the safe passage out of Tiananmen
Square of hundreds of those remaining, including me. For this action, Liu came
to be known as one of the "Four Noblemen of Tiananmen." If not for
his intervention, hundreds more young lives would have been tragically lost.
After the crackdown, Liu was arrested. He had no illusions
about how a scholar would be treated in prison. "Willingness to endure
punishment and even death is the price that must be paid for liberty," he
said just before turning himself in. I wouldn't see my friend again for two
years.
He was sent to Qincheng Prison, China's Bastille, on the
charge of "instigating counterrevolutionary rebellion." After his
release in 1991, he was again arrested in 1995, this time spending four years
in a labor camp for calling on the government to overturn its verdict on
Tiananmen and acknowledge its tragic mistake in violently suppressing the
peaceful, patriotic student movement.
The last time I saw Liu was Christmas 1999. We sat on the
balcony of a friend's apartment, sipping beer and reminiscing about the old
carefree days of the 1980s. "I wonder if we'll ever see the kind of
freedom and open debate that we experienced then," he sighed. We raised
our glasses and vowed, "Let's hope so!"
In a letter to his friend Liao Yiwu in 2000, he wrote:
"Compared to others under the communist black curtain, we can't call
ourselves real men.... In order for everyone to have the right to be selfish,
there has to be a righteous giant who will sacrifice selflessly.... In history,
nothing is fated. The appearance of a martyr will completely change a nation's
soul and raise the spiritual quality of the people."
In 2002, he reflected on the radical, Mao Zedong-style
politics he embraced earlier in his career: "I realized that my entire youth
and early writings were nurtured in hatred, violence, arrogance, lies,
cynicism, and sarcasm. I was raised on the 'wolf's milk' of the revolution, and
Mao-style thinking and Cultural Revolution-style language was ingrained in me.
I'd become my own jail. It may take me a lifetime to get rid of the
poison."
In 2008, Liu initiated the seminal Charter 08 political
freedom and human rights manifesto and signed it with more than 300 fellow
Chinese citizens. The Charter was drafted to coincide with the 60th anniversary
of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Two days before
its official release, Liu was arrested and charged with "suspicion of
inciting subversion of state power."
"I Have No Enemies" was the statement he
prepared to read at his trial, but wasn't allowed to. The essay was later read
at the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony which Liu was not able to attend due to
his imprisonment.
"I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police
who have monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who
prosecuted me, or the judges who sentenced me, are my enemies. While I'm unable
to accept your surveillance, arrest, prosecution or sentencing, I respect your
professions and personalities.... I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional
right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a
Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints."
On Christmas Day 2009, Liu was sentenced to 11 years'
imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights.
"China's political reform should be gradual,
peaceful, orderly and controllable and should be interactive, from above to
below and from below to above.... The order of a bad government is better than
the chaos of anarchy. So I oppose systems of government that are dictatorships
or monopolies. This is not 'inciting subversion of state power'. Opposition is
not equivalent to subversion," Liu wrote in his rejected appeal.
He was incarcerated in Liaoning Province. Last month, he
was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and granted medical parole. He died in
the prison hospital on July 13 at the age of 61. In the 28 years since the
Tiananmen massacre, he had spent more than half in prison.
Farewell old friend.
Scott Savitt
Scott Savitt is the author of "Crashing the Party: An
American Reporter in China" and was previously a correspondent in Beijing
for the Los Angeles Times and other publications.
