SinoNet: Liu Xiaobo, Ai Weiwei für ein anderes China

[Gregor Kneussel]

Gratuliere!

Untenstehend ein etwas anderer Blickwinkel von Sautman und Yan, dem ich 
noch hinzufügen würde, dass Li Xiaobo (als konsequenter Neoliberaler und 
mutiger Verfechter der zivilisatorischen Mission des Westens) ein 
begeisterter Unterstützer des Angriffs der USA auf den Irak war und ist.

Natürlich sollte er dafür nicht im Gefängnis sitzen; dass er im 
Gefängnis sitzt, enthebt seine Ansichten jedoch nicht jeglicher Kritik.

Herzliche Grüße
Gregor
___________________

South China Morning Post, 12. Oktober 2010 2010

Medal Contention
(Urspünglicher Titel der AutorInnen:
Liu Xiaobo Deserves an Ig Nobel Peace Prize)

Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong

   In non-peace related fields, there are Nobel Prizes and, somewhat 
less famously, “Ig Nobel Prizes.” A group of scientists presents the 
latter annually, as a joke, but also to make a point about undeserving 
activity in their fields.  One of the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize 
for Physics had several years back also received an Ig Nobel Prize.
   The award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned dissident Liu 
Xiaobo is being celebrated globally, mainly by elites who claim to know 
what Liu is about.  They say he is for human rights and democracy, but 
there is more to it than that, because much of what he is about is ignoble.
   When people living in authoritarian societies demand freedom of 
speech, they usually do so with goals in mind that go beyond just 
allowing everyone to have a say.  Liu Xiaobo’s political and social 
goals have scarcely been mentioned in the current wave of adulation, yet 
these goals are distinctly at variance with the interests of the vast 
majority of Chinese, as they perceive them.
   What a few people in China know about Liu, but hardly any outsiders 
do, is his prescription for China’s development, first made when Liu was 
already in his 30s.  In 1988, an interviewer asked him what condition 
China needs to have real historical change.  He answered that China 
needs to have 300 years of colonization.  Liu attributed what Hong Kong 
is today to a hundred years of colonization, so China would need 300 
years of colonization for it to become like Hong Kong.
   That was more than two decades ago, but in 2007, Liu stated that he 
did not want to take back what he had said in 1988, because it reflects 
a belief he retains.  He attributes progress in China to Westernization 
and has said that the more that Westernization exists in the various 
spheres of Chinese society, the more progress is attained.  He is either 
woefully ignorant of the nature of colonialism, which involved 
legally-mandated racial discrimination and the colonizers’ political and 
economic monopolies, or Liu finds it a congenial alternative because he 
is convinced of Western superiority.  This can hardly be expected to be 
a sentiment shared by most Chinese.
   In his 2007 statement, Liu claimed that in the economic sphere, 
progress could be chalked up to privatization.  Not surprisingly then, 
“Charter ’08,” a statement he mainly authored and that called for a 
Western-style political system in China, also urges a “free market” 
transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership and the 
privatization of land ownership.
   Privatization in Russia resulted in a colossal robbery of public 
wealth by a few oligarchs.  To the extent privatization has occurred in 
China, it has mainly enriched former officials and has often worsened 
the conditions of labor.  An agrarian capitalism based on landed 
property would have no assured benefit, but might bring back the 
execrable system of landlords and landless peasants.  Further 
privatization would likely increase the already high level of inequality 
in China, which is why surveys show that most Chinese oppose it.
   Many observers recognize that the Nobel Peace Prize is a politics 
prize and a morally bankrupt one at that: do something that accords with 
mainstream Western elite thinking about what “advances peace” and you 
may get a prize.  Continue, for as long as you can, a war that kills 
thousands or even millions of civilians, as Henry Kissinger did in 
Indochina and Barack Obama is doing in Afghanistan, and you may still 
get a prize.  If you attack China, the perceived potential rival of the 
West’s hegemon, as the Dalai Lama and Liu Xiaobo have done, your chances 
for a prize increase.
   The Chinese government has argued that the spirit of the Nobel Peace 
Prize has been infringed by awarding it to one who is imprisoned for 
violating Chinese law.  That however is beside the point.  There was no 
need to imprison Liu and there has been no need for a binary choice 
between shutting him up by fiat or treating him as a hero.  Rather, 
there has only been a need to bring to light Liu’s self-proclaimed 
goals.  If most Chinese, especially the non-elite majority, knew about 
his prescribed path for China, they would turn away from him as someone 
with things ignoble on offer.
   The world has many political prisoners; most are in fact imprisoned 
in countries with governments that continue to receive all manner of 
assistance from other countries that proclaim themselves beacons of 
human rights and democracy.  Among those myriads languishing in prison, 
most want something far better for the peoples of their country than 
does Liu Xiaobo and are far worthier of an award because of it.

Barry Sautman is a political scientist and lawyer at Hong Kong 
University of Science & Technology; Yan Hairong is an anthropologist at 
Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Am 2010-10-12 19:55, schrieb Martin Winter:
> Liebe Freunde,
>
> Bitte schaut mal in die heutige FAZ. Bin sehr stolz, wenn auch "nur"
> als Übersetzer. Der Liu-Xiaobo-Artikel wird wahrscheinlich auch bald auf
> Englisch erscheinen.
>
> Liebe Grüße,
>
> Martin