I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement (2009)
nobelprize.org
nobelprize.org
"It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is. Given the size of China, certainly it would need 300 years of colonisation for it to become like what Hong Kong is today. I even doubt whether 300 years would be enough." Liu Xiaobo made himself quite clear back in the 1980s. The in 1996, he further argued that
"progress in China depends on westernisation and the more westernisation, the more progress."
Western, independent source here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-...
I thought China should be allowed to preserve it own culture and independence. Liu seemed to hold a quite different idea.
btw, it must be quite a shock for you to know such fact. I mean please feel free to downvote if you agree with Liu's very repressive view on how China should be colonized by the west for 300 years to get better argument. The whole "progress in China depends on westernisation" also sounds like a cultural genocide to me.
I'm no Sinophile, and I think Great Britain should have built a floating desalination plant before ceding Hong Kong Island. But the little I know about Chinas history, the fragmentation of historically antagonistic races among the Chinese diaspora we call a people, and the immense variety of issues that have developed in isolation unique to their world, I believe all conspire to alienate the most rational observers from true neutrality. My mind blows fuses just contemplating the pressures and tensions that abound seemingly everywhere in their daily lives.
I am a decently educated Chinese native speaker. The quoted Chinese sentence from Liu is not acceptable to me. I do not think it is a direct comparison against HongKong.
I am fine with him arguing about changing the political situation of China or whatsoever. And, actually, the discussion on that should be more open. However, I cannot agree on his view about changing China through colonial no matter what he tries to justify. And I believe no rational Chinese people will agree him on this.
Moreover, China != Chinese government. I, personally, hate the opinion that Chinese people who has a "traditional" view is inferior. Yes, they might be "washed" by todays "Chinese system" or education, and you disagree with them. But, it is not their fault.
And most of Liu's view is going towards the direction I really hate. Another example is his calling Chinese people "slaves transformed by the education system".
Again, I am not saying the authorities did the right or best thing. But just Liu is not the person that I would respect.
Love it when topics on China or India pop up. You get all the same subservient pundits posting, but anecdotally the Chinese bots have spelling on their side.
or you may want to explain to me how this whole "China needs to be colonized by the west for 300 years" crap is not extremist style.
The core issue is that the Chinese government locked someone up for stating an opinion. An opinion not much different in substance than then ones you are stating in this thread.
Would you consider it just for you to be imprisoned for your views alone? I would not, and I think that is also true for other people.
1. Liu is not acceptable by a lot of Chinese people due to his aggressive words on colonial and slavers.
2. Liu was sentenced by the gov due to "subversion".
So to judge Liu, we have to look from at least two different angles, not just "he was sentenced".
Few people thinks 2 is right. I, personally, do not agree on 2 too.
And I am now thinking why most people outside China only know about 2 when they try to judge about Liu?
If he only expresses some views of his, it's probably OK if he's not influential. If he got awarded some prize that's important worldwide and sometimes awarded to POTUS, well, it's totally a different thing.
Would that alone be enough that I would ask him to be imprisoned? Never.
You're confusing a dislike of his opinions for justification for jailing him, yet again.
If you are interested in how he was jailed, search google, there are tons of articles there.
It's not a charge that means a lot to those educated in the west, who would probably view it as a thought crime charge.
Can you explain its use and value better?
In most western democracies, you can be imprisoned for a multitude of "thought crimes" - denying the holocaust, inciting racial or religious hatred, encouraging acts of terrorism etc.
The US has uniquely strong protections for free speech, but even there I expect that many people would support a ban on certain kinds of speech. How many Fox News viewers believe that jihadi preachers should be locked up? How many New York Times readers believe that white supremacists should be locked up?
Would you consider it just for Assange to be under house arrest in an Embassy?
Would you consider it just for Liu Xiaobo to be under house arrest at his own home?
Well, IMHO, all 3 incidents are unjust. However, they all happened.
Interestingly, Liu Xiaobo earned a Nobel price, but Snowden didn't. Not sure what would happen if the Chinese government awarded Snowden or Assange some special prizes.
I don't agree with Snowden's treatment either, but it's important not to confuse freedom of speech with dissemination of confidential information.
In the speech, Liu spends considerable time praising the Communist Party's progress on human rights:
'The weakening of the enemy mentality has paved the way for the regime to gradually accept the universality of human rights. In [1997 and] 1998 the Chinese government made a commitment to sign two major United Nations international human rights covenants, signaling China's acceptance of universal human rights standards. In 2004, the National People's Congress (NPC) amended the Constitution, writing into the Constitution for the first time that "the state respects and guarantees human rights," signaling that human rights have already become one of the fundamental principles of China's rule of law. At the same time, the current regime puts forth the ideas of “putting people first" and "Creating a harmonious society," signaling progress in the CPC's concept of rule.'
After that, he even praises the progress he saw in jail conditions during the decades he's been in and out of the prison system, and offers thanks to a corrections officer who treated him well!
My tendency to idealize Western civilization arises from my nationalistic desire to use the West in order to reform China. But this has led me to overlook the flaws in Western culture — or, even if I see them, to set them aside intentionally. I have not, therefore, been able to stand apart from Western culture, take a critical view of it and perhaps get a better view of human frailty more generally. I have been obsequious toward Western civilization, exaggerating its merits, and at the same time exaggerating my own merits. I have viewed the West as if it were not only the salvation of China but also the natural and ultimate destination of all humanity.
What would also help is more context for the quote. Is it a part of a bigger piece of writing?
I'm not asking you to do all the research for me, feel free not to reply - my interest is only really in passing. Though if you do reply feel free to use as much original Chinese text as you like to lend clarity. [1]真是我会度看可是我写中文写得不好。
[1] For those of you playing at home I can read, but my written Chinese is a bloody disaster.
The interviewer says “colonial” is an expression and sarcasm. It’s Liu’s writing style. It’s said to him as he’s Liu’s editor and long time friend, so he understood what Liu meant. Liu did explain what he meant in an article sent to him in 2007.
Some excerpts:
1. “由此可見，劉曉波的意思是要在中國實行英國在香港推行的資本主義政策，起碼需要三百年，才會變得和香港一樣好。他並不是
要中國再去當誰的殖民地”
Liu meant China can benefit from westernisation like HK, he didn’t meant for it to be really
colonised.
2. “為甚麼搞「一國兩制，港人治港」？皆出於此：香港人認為殖民地好過共產專制...”
How to view colonisation is a debated issue in HK, Liu pick it up as he just arrived there.
3. “曉波從北京發來一篇〈我與開放雜誌結緣十九年〉稿子。文中主動談起八八年那次訪問，寫道... 他說，一句「三百年殖民地」
的即興回答，成為中共迫害他的「典型證據」，但他不會為自己辯解，「特別是民族主義佔據話語制高點的今日中國，
我更不想收回這句話。」... 他用一句話來解釋那犯眾怒的「三百年殖民地」之說。即「中國的現代化需要經過長期的西化過
程方能實現。」”
He sent me an article mentioned the 88’ interview. He said the prompt answer has been used as
an accusation against him. Yet as China’s nationalism is now the highest moral, he will not
take it back. In the article he explained “300 years’ colonisation”, as “China’s modernisation
needs a long process as westernisation.”
4. “劉曉波被稱為「黑馬」，那放言無忌、一針見血的表達方式，已成為他的標誌… ”
Liu is an abrupt literature critic. Sarcasm is his writing style.
[1] http://baike.baidu.com/link?url=JKnyWvjwNqi81otv8InKVm28EZGa... (in Chinese）
He does not say whether it would be a good or bad thing. I don't even notice an undertone.
I am a native Chinese, which also implies I understand more of the language context. Also it implies I probably can share more of the sentiment as other Chinese people do. So, yes, there is a difference between how people view the exact same content. And I was trying to clarify that.
> China would have to be colonized for 300 years to reach the same state as Hong Kong
Why China needs to reach the same state as Hongkong through Colonial? Does he feel HongKong was at a worse state compared to China at that point? Or HongKong was at a better state?
And, yes, no matter what state Hongkong was at due to the Colonial, China SHOULD NEVER go that path. That is where I cannot agree with Liu.
Any one can justify his words. But I will still hold my opinion on this specific issue after I read quite a lot about Liu, about what he said, about what he wrote, in both Chinese and English articles and documentary.
Now maybe it is Liu Xiaobo's belief that China should be like Hong Kong, but that is not necessarily implied by the quote.
Do you also believe that "brain in a jar" thought experiments imply that someone wants to cut your brain out and put it in a jar?
If colonization is a good thing, why in the first place the colonies all sought independence as soon as they had a chance?
Why should China be colonized if colonization is not a good thing (for the Chinese people)?
May him rest in peace.
[1]: The interviewer's clarification of context (in Chinese) http://www.open.com.hk/content.php?id=44#.WWoeRjcRWrw
note that:
1. he had numerous interviews after publicly making that comments. 2. he is widely criticised for that even by his peers, if that was an misunderstanding, why he refused to offer any clarification?
We have a word called "带路党", which literally means road-leading party, to describe people who think China being colonized is a viable idea and do whatever they feel it's helpful to achieve that goal. "Road-leading" means giving directions to intruders (or saviours in their view), in many cases, the US army.
Yeah, amusing, I know.
I don't have the exact definition of the word, here's an old meme people used during NSA's PRISM went viral, hope you get the idea. http://photocdn.sohu.com/20130613/Img378667270.jpg
The text on the right means "it's necessary to speak English well."
This comment is not going to be popular here though, predictable downvotes incoming, but I'm fine with it.
> Even he didn't, his audience are genuinely considering and discussing that option.
Imagine if this was a thirty year misunderstanding! In that case though, it'd be 100% his fault for allowing it to continue.
I suppose we can only really go on by taking the view that the man is dead, and said a lot of things that you might and might not agree with.
Take the good, learn from the bad, remember the writer of both as a flawed human like we all are and move on to the future right?
I see you've posted a lot in this thread. Lots of very short replies like this one repeating the same basic thing over and over.
I do think there is merit in condemning even entertaining the idea we're discussing but your many posts give a very desperate air to your position.
Perhaps you could allow others to have side conversations in this thread without popping in constantly.
For your concerns regarding my post above, maybe you can start to back up your claims by providing some proof? For example, when you painted Liu's "China should be colonized by the west for 300 years" comments as some so called "misunderstanding", can you be more specific and shed some light on what makes you to believe that? Surely some convincing evidence is going to mute my doubts.
If you check my posts, I've provided his comments together with some analysis on his stands from a mainstream western media. You posted 4 times in this thread but everything was just what _YOU_ believe.
Sounds reasonable to you?
I'm not defending them. I'm questioning the interpretation of the quote posted which doesn't imply should. There is a difference and I can be swayed either way.
> when you painted Liu's "China should be colonized by the west for 300 years" comments as some so called "misunderstanding"
It was a joke. Can you imagine the absurdity if it was a 30 year misunderstanding?
Your hostility in this thread isn't helping your case at all, which in spite of you attacking me I still believe can probably be made very well!
I believe my questions have been quite reasonable, and I am the kind of person who can be 'won' over with good argument.
What really turns me off is the kind of absolutist hostility that you're displaying.
I don't think it's been answered to a reasonable level of certainty.
The closest to a good answer was one guy who said he'd seen an interview in which the guy clarified that yes he did mean that.
But nobody has been able to find that interview, so to my mind it's still an open question. I'm being very careful to not accept statements of opinion as statements of fact.
No, the closest was this: https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=14775990
You can find further confirmation of his views very easily by googling the English language media. Doing this could have saved a lot of pointless back and forth:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-...
> In a 1988 interview he stated that "to choose westernisation is to choose to be human".
> In a well-known statement of 1988, Liu said:
> It took Hong Kong 100 years to become what it is. Given the size of China, certainly it would need 300 years of colonisation for it to become like what Hong Kong is today. I even doubt whether 300 years would be enough.
> Affirming this sentiment in Open magazine in 2006, he added that progress in China depends on westernisation and the more westernisation, the more progress.
Well, now we have this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14780074
> In a 1988 interview he stated that "to choose westernisation is to choose to be human".
> Affirming this sentiment in Open magazine in 2006, he added that progress in China depends on westernisation and the more westernisation, the more progress.
Westernisation doesn't imply colonisation in the traditional sense. I've removed the quote we are discussing for clarity of my reply I hope you understand.
My takeaway from everything I've read in the past few hours is that he was a bit of a cantankerous guy who said some dumb shit that was widely misinterpreted and used to ruin him. He then refused to take it back either because he was unable to or too stubborn to do so.
I'm glad I pushed as hard as I did for clarification of the colonisation thing. In the end there were a few good interpretations (some conflicting!) and we are richer for having read them rather than taking the first presented as gospel.
The funny thing is I don't really give a shit about this dude, and actually don't think that he should have been given a nobel prize (nor Obama lol...) I think Nobel prizes for peace should go to those who actually promote or create peace... in whatever political framework that comes. Democracy isn't a panacea!
But I feel like a lot of the criticism of this guy has been super heavy handed and like many young western men I bristle at the idea of being told what is right/acceptable without good explanation. I hope you understand my perspective and why I kept questioning when I I did.
It wasn't misinterpreted. He explicitly stood by what he said. If it was sarcasm, he could just have clarified that it was sarcasm.
>Westernisation doesn't imply colonisation in the traditional sense
It kind of does, in the context of talking about a former British colony.
> Liu admitted in 2006 that the response was extemporaneous, although he did not intend to take it back, because it represented "an extreme expression of his longheld belief."[32] The quote was nonetheless used against him. He has commented, "Even today [in 2006], radical patriotic 'angry youth' still frequently use these words to paint me with 'treason'."[32]
Take that as you will. I've heard many Chinese call him racist and treacherous because of these words, that he deserved to die in prison. That is ridiculous, the position was definitely cringe worthy to many people, it isn't one I would agree with, but it was just one position made with lots of resignation.
There is a reason why we just shrug out arms at this, not because we agree with the opinion, but because intellectuals are bound to hold a few opinions that are worse (as judged by whoever) than others. You can crucify almost anyone if you cherry pick.
the best explanation I could think of, is that he was young and tried to make an extraordinary statement to express his view. we all did this.
> the best explanation I could think of, is that he was young and tried to make an extraordinary statement to express his view. we all did this.
That is a very charitable interpretation. It's a difficult thing to view view someone's contentious statements through a kind lens like that. I don't mean to lay it on thick but in a thread with a lot of hostility I'm thankful for your thoughtful contribution.
since 1898, China has been through a process longer than a century trying to figure out why we lagged behind. many had sharply criticised Chinese history, political system/heritages, culture, language, writing system, geological layout, even Chinese as a race. amongst them, Liu's view was actually not that extreme, nor innovative. It's fascinating to read through this slice of history, laughing at some remarks made by great figures, while appreciate their frustration as flawed human beings constrained by their times/knowledge/visions/environments.
as an entrepreneur, I think Liu's view is probably wrong and his political campaign has no clear target market. but he deserved a longer and healthy life.
You make a good point about famous figures remarks. It's important to keep in mind the kind of absurdity we've seen from prominent people in the past when we hear something shocking from the public figures of our own time. The people of the past are flawed, and the people of the present are flawed.
Alas, the 'cultural revolution' destroyed most of that culture. You can still find some remnants of parts of it in the overseas chinese communities of southeast asia.
I'm not ruling out genuine believer of their opinions but there's also this possibility.
They're getting pretty sophisticated and sometimes instead of supporting the government, their goal would be disinformation, induce hatred (i.e. troll) to divide and conquer.
If you're interested in the perspective of some HongKongness (myself included) I'd recommend this film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Years_(2015_film)
It's so touching to me because it's dystopian but really just exaggeration what I perceive in real life that how the changes are creeping in during recent years, continual development of public swaying psyops is just one of them.
Not that I like Britain nor UN either as they both dropped the ball of enforcing the Sino-British Joint Declaration or giving HongKong a chance to decide its own fate as other post-colony.
Or do you think my comment should be censored?
Now, the government is too afraid to publicly speak about Liu, to not sour what they have spent years trying to fix. Weak.
I'm not aware of what happened in Norway after those Chinese sanctions. They could democratically decided that it was ethically worth losing those businesses. Any Norwegian people here?
I'd like to take the opportunity to say that the feeling at the time was that we got left out in the storm by ourselves by other western countries once the Chinese sanctions came on. In the direct aftermath everyone else just kinda looked the other way, and in the long run there is no way a tiny country like us can withstand that pressure over time.
I found this analysis comparing the sanctions to Norway and Mongolia and the final result.
https://cpianalysis.org/2017/02/22/the-costs-of-normalisatio...
As it should be. Speaking up would only draw more attention to Norway's unscrupulous actions in conflicted and autocratic regions, especially considering its public image of neutrality, diplomacy, non-interference, and promoting progressive values. Denmark and Sweden are also in this as well - they say they promote human rights while exporting billions of euros in military technology and services to regions with known human rights abuses.
The article says Norway is complicit in these companies' actions which are complicit in "forced labor, killings, and land confiscation"
In fact, the government structure designed by Lisi in Qin dynasty 2000 years ago, and still being used today, is a fragile structure in peaceful times. It's a structure designed for war and the law enforcement tends to vanish if no direct threats are present to ordinary people. The central government will lose authority if the officials cannot contain dissenters, especially those who may be backed up by the provincial government officials.
Liu tried to restructure the aforementioned political structure through 08 Charter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_08
We still don't know the details about what he actually had done besides drafting the manifesto.If he tried to create a political group to materialize the 08 Charter, then it's definitely a substantial threat to the central government and even to most of the Chinese people, though it would be a trivial issue in any western countries.
The Norwegian government officials apparently had no idea about the severity of backing a dissenter challenging the central government in China due to cultural gap. In fact, many NGOs failed the same way in China. Those few who helps the central government are successful though.
Liu spotted many flaws in the current political structure that many Chinese people know for years. Even scholars in northern Song dynasty and late Ming dynasty also tried to fix the same drawbacks Liu mentioned, but they failed miserably and gave up the entire civilization to Mongolians and Manchurians.
In my opinion, Liu's importance is exaggerated by western media. His solution to our centuries-old problem is completely non-realistic and very dangerous. Ordinary Chinese people will laugh at his naiveness instead of respecting his idealism.
To do a successful political system reform to attain the same achievements that western civilization has obtained through hundreds of years of improvement, China needs to meet Chinese people's most urgent demands step by step and reason from First Principles instead of mimic any model countries.
It's kind of similar to the way for a startup to succeed.
Edit: Added the Norwegian government paragraph and fixed some grammar issues.
China will get democracy one day. It will be because a large swath of Chinese people want it. Although there have been some high profile dissidents in China over the last 30 years, including Liu Xiaobo and the 1989 students, most Chinese are probably not ready for their message of political openness. They're still focused on lower levels of the Maslow hierarchy like shelter and food.
These dissidents have the bad luck of poor timing. In another 30 or 40 years when China is fully developed, their ideas may be well accepted among citizenry and party reformers.
Not really. Imagine if the Nobel institute only granted the prize to Europeans. Imagine the furore that would cause. Now, sure, the winners have often been controversial. Here, I can't disagree. I mean, what's not to like about someone who wants to change their own country for the better?
But beyond our own consumption of this narrative, his efforts are pretty much irrelevant to any eventual democratization in China.
In my father's life, it was not allowed to vote unless you were the owner outright of property and women gained suffrage in his early years. My father lacked a birth certificate, and this prevented him from voting, until resolved. Imagine every child of a single parent family disenfranchised...
Isn't this exactly the problem. Someone else deciding what you are ready or not ready for. For me democracy is about everyone having a voice, even those on the lower levels. There will always be different levels.
But I cannot help but feel saddened, to reduce the prize to a level of the publicity it conveys.
Neither can I eradicate the thought that awarding such a prize in this manner surely is felt as a provocation by the Chinese government as you rightly point out that the sole effect is of publicising and canonising a man whom they are, by their values, imprisoning justly for admitted subversion.
Democracy is not magic. A failing state is a failing state, regardless of the system of government. Great rebels rarely make for great politicians.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/rohingya-muslim... https://theintercept.com/2017/04/13/burmese-nobel-prize-winn...
Myanmar got their freedom. Now, there is another problem and the current establishment isn't doing enough. And, what you shared is, again, the world media covering these lapses. Suu Kyi did a lot right in the fight for freedom, but doesn't make her infallible. Perhaps some one else from within Myanmar will rise up and champion the cause. And, the world media and external entities do their part to help in terms of coverage, spreading awareness, diplomatic pressure, sanctions etc. We cannot just brush off the efforts of the latter saying they are doing it just to please themselves.
https://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_...
Have you considered that perhaps most Chinese people are "made unready" for democracy simply because of the extreme suppressions by an authoritarian regime?
Or have you considered that perhaps food, shelter, and openness are not mutually exclusive -- that one must have one in order to have another?
It also makes perfect sense if you look at the post-medieval revival of the democratic idea: It was the emerging middle-class, rich people, who demanded participation in the governing processes.
Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc aren't Western countries.
Korea and Taiwan got their best economic growth stage when they are in an authoritarian stage. China is still in this stage.
Japan is an interesting story worths to study.
Besides these countries, there are many countries, such as many in Africa, doesn't become better after the democratic process.
The Chinese government has a point that "Let's concentrate and grow the economic first. After everybody has a much better economic status, we can consider other things". I think they did have a good point on it.
I was told in 2006 by a prominent Chinese researcher when visiting that there were just a bunch of old fogeys in government and that's why some internet sites were blocked. They would die off/retire soon and the internet would be completely open. Of course, that isn't what happened: after the 2008 Olympics things got much worse and today we fondly look back on 2006 as s time when we could actually use Facebook in china without fiddling through a VPN.
We were told in 2010 that Beijing's air pollution problem would definitely be solved by 2020.
When I first lived in china 2002, I found longer term expats to be so salty and cynical, wow they are so close minded! Before I left just last year I of course had become that expat.
In another 30 or 40 year what china will be honestly can't be predicted.
To me it's the embodiment of the hypocrisy of the west when it comes to the defense human rights. Let's be frank, we didn't abolish slavery, we just outsourced it to make it more acceptable. It's also a proof that capitalism doesn't need democracy or free-speech to function.
I mean, I'm veggie but I wouldn't dare considering eat lovers bad persons given what else I consume.
That doesn't mean we should feel guilty. It's a hard problem. But that's certainly means we should not feel entitled. And boy do we love to be.
To claim that it is a non-existent problem or that it isn't severe or that it doesn't merit outrage or to imagine that it is somehow on a different level to the chattel slavery of 19th century America is to turn a blind eye to the truth or to try to finely grade suffering in a way that is dehumanizing.
How about you go back to your suggest site and read it carefully?
I think you're doing an aggregation error of sorts. The fact that different people in the West have different opinions about China (and some of them are perhaps even hypocritical) doesn't make every westerner's opinion a hypocritical one.
Is it the best system? Hardly, but I don’t think withdrawing from globalism is going to help matters. The more we find ways to work together the better.
As Joan Robinson said, "the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all."
Being paid for work you do not have to do is not slavery. You see we built this thing called civilization whereby instead of starving when crops fail, dying at age 30 with dysentery and living in fear of being bludgeoned to death by a rival clan, we can exchange our labour for security, health and resources.
It's not perfect but if Capitalism ain't pleasing you then ask the person working that outsourced job what their grandparents thought of Communism, an ideology that crushed the very soul of China and brought misery, mass death and madness.
Or just ask them what work they'd be doing if Capitalism wasn't keeping them enslaved in jobs.
I'd say very soon you'd see fat cats sitting and deciding that on average their friends do better than the rest and here we are again.
The incentives in capitalism actually work out. When you can only spend your own money, and you have the freedom to choose how to spend it, markets are stochastically optimal for a huge range of allocation problems. Any sort of centralized system that tries to have only "the advantages of capitalism" usually fails because it doesn't make any sense game-theoretically or from an optimization perspective.
In return you get to live in a society with high trust, little crime and good social services.
This requires trust and ethics and the will to enforce it politically (and maybe a small homogeneous population).
The fact is there is no opt-out, you do have to participate in the capitalist system to survive, and even if you somehow manage to live in the wilderness, capitalism will eventually come and beat down your door to tell you that the land you're camping on now belongs to someone else, and would you kindly move along? Capitalism claims all resources, then sells them back to you in exchange for your soul. It was this realization that eventually motivated the Unabomber.
The Iraq War, The American War on Vietnam, daily drone bombings in Afghanistan and Pakistan by a nobel peace prize winner would be more like it.
Its the same as in martial arts, the fixed form practices got absolutely decimated by MMA, diversity is a strength and modern cultures are very bad at accepting outsiders.
For outsiders, they are icons/symbols. For most of insiders, they are someone unrelated to their life. In events like this, both sides can consume the news and get what they want without anything really meaningful happens.
This is a kind of hopeless in the real world.
Icons get selected and pushed to their directions and have no means to actually do anything useful.
As an average Joe, the best thing to do is reducing this kind of consumption, taking care of yourself and, hopefully, not getting involved in/caught. This can somewhat explain, from one dimension, why there is no truly strong and cohesive Chinese community in the western world.
More money only spoils unrestricted kids even more. They don't settle down for the progress they gain, just want even more. That's a DNA in the core of the whole system and affects people within.
There is nothing to look for, just strong dark currents.
I think that the Communist Party of China made a really big mistake, which caused a serious impact on China's national image. But I also do not agree with Liu Xiaobo's political views.
Finally, China's political environment indeed bad, but most of the Western media coverage distorted the facts, including the Liu Xiaobo event.
You haven't clarified any facts, you've just made two statements of opinion without any supporting evidence or greater explanation.
I hate China's government and the way they operate but I also recognize that the world is very complex and cultures are ancient and have very different but also successful mechanisms of operation. On the same note I would not write off an American's perspective because the president is a wack job.
It just so happens that this kind of statement is common in the Chinese people that I speak with.
You can make a very good case that Western media is terrible in its China reporting, but a blunt statement like that isn't going to be received well in a community like HN that likes to think of itself as critical.
As I said, I was trying to help them understand how their statement was likely to be received not "tritely dismissing the comment on technicalities." which is an interpretation entirely of your own that wasn't contained in my original post.
You take a comment that is not really qualitatively different from any other post on HN and give it special status because it's posted by a Chinese national.
You're the one asking others to give this empty argument special status because it was posted by someone who claims to be Chinese.
"Oh the coverage is all wrong" is a pretty empty statement by itself.
That in itself is not necessarily a good thing; more than once I've seen it lead to fruitless discussion because it turns out those involved actually did not agree on those assumptions.
But on the other hand it's sometimes necessary. We can't have a discussion, practically speaking, where we define every term we use journal-article-style, or provide references for every single assumption.
My point is that it strikes me as perfectly reasonable that when 'we' are confronted with a perspective that is very different from our own, some more effort should be put into providing arguments (and/or definitions).
Not to mention that on the whole I'd say HN already demands elaboration even from those who have a relatively-similar perspective or background, and I think more of that wouldn't hurt.
I do understand how it can seem unfair, but I don't think it's unreasonable.
But grandparent's post genuinely just presented two opinions without elaboration. It could have come from a westerner and it would downvoted, because it just isn't a high quality comment (though definitely not an offensive one either).
What facts were distorted? That he was jailed, multiple times, for defending freedom of expression? That he died in custody? That his wife Liu Xia was under house arrest for years without charges? Or was it his role during the Tiananmen protests and subsequent massacre? That he negotiated the free passage of students from Tiananmen, saving many from the advancing tanks?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-...
Who gets to decide what is or is not allowed to be spoken?
> Liu said China needs to be colonized for 300 years to get better, is it just free of speech? sound quite repressive to me.
Even if it is repressive, preventing him to say it by arresting him and his family is not repressive to you?
Are you sure he was arrest because of saying that? Do you have any facts to support your view?
> Liu said China needs to be colonized for 300 years to get better, is it just free of speech? sound quite repressive to me.
Do you think Liu deserves Nobel Peace Prize after saying that publicly?
Remember that the argument was "There is certain views that should never ever be publicly stated".
I don't care one way or the other, it's the Nobel committee's decision who they award the prize to. It makes no difference to me. It doesn't make what he, or any other Nobel Laureate say any more true or worthy of consideration.
> Remember that the argument was "There is certain views that should never ever be publicly stated".
There was no argument, it was a statement. If you want to argue in favor of why some views should never be publicly stated and who is gonna decide what is/is not allowed, go ahead.
the core issue here is simple: how come such a man who repeatedly made such extremist styles comments in public got awarded the nobel peace prize.
That is your issue, not mine.
> you came to this thread largely because Liu is not a random dude on street, he had the nobel peace prize.
I am here because of the outrageous comment you made about ‘certain views that should never ever be publicly stated’. If you can’t defend your opinions then why are you here? Can you, or can you not explain how do you support your extremist views?
what a joke.
A joke indeed.
If you live in a society that allows you to publicly state anything without consequences, I'd say that is horrible.
If you live in the US, try talk about some racial stuff and bring in the same colonization elements in, see how that is going to end.
Time to grow up talk like an adult.
For his sentence, no one in this thread ever supported that, for me, it is as bad as giving this man the nobel peace prize.
Yes. You must defend every word you say.
> Time to grow up talk like an adult.
You mean like an adult who can't defend his/her positions and is willing to send to jail everyone who disagrees with him/her? What a wonderful "adult" you must be.
But that doesn't exist anywhere in the world. The closest is the US, but even their extremist version of freedom of speech has government imposed limits.
Yea. That is what I want to learn. You do not care about the Prize.
> If you want to argue in favor of why some views should never be publicly stated and who is gonna decide what is/is not allowed, go ahead.
It seems that is you want to know about it. Probably I misunderstood you. I have no interest :P. So we can stop here.
You can spend your entire life arguing whether it is good or bad for China to be colonized by the west for 300 years, I am not going to waste my time on that.
Oh, you just don't like it.
In America we have helpful groups like Southern Poverty Law Center which direct us to which ideas are bad speech that shouldn't be allowed. Maybe China should follow our example and privatize their speech curatorship police, then they would be more free.
To see this as people simply being closed-minded to different cultures is really myopic.
I personally refuse to hold people to different moral standards because they come from another country.
EDIT: Of course they do much worse, I was pointing to the fact that not a peep was heard on Fox or CNN.
More than that actually, there are politicians who are notorious for being hand-in-gloves in their home countries. They always get picked for these "random" checks in the US.
In Iceland, if the name is not on the National Registry's list of approved names parents first have to get approval of the name with Icelandic Naming Committee. About 50% of submitted names get rejected. For example Zoe, Harriet, Duncan, Ludwig... all violate naming requirements and are not allowed.
Some countries ban only names that would be degrading to children like naming them after product names or outright insults like Anus or gibberish names like random string. Others have ban rules based on politics, religion, terrorism, celebreties and so on. You can't name child Binyamin and Linda in Saudi Arabia, Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler in Germany, Elvis in Sweden, Rambo in Mexico, Jimmy in Portugal, Lucifer in New Zealand and so on.
You realize that US influence can never achieve anything without the citizens of China agree with it right? Like now majority of Chinese think your political system is a joke. And you know what? The majority of Chinese like those policies that's violating certain human rights. If US can only be ever weaker as time goes by then the values you hold dear can only be more insignificant in other part of the world.
While US democracy isnt a particularly good form as it puts too much power in the executive branch, it's overly partisan and two-party, there's nothing fundamentally broken about it. There's disadvantages to proportional representation, which would break the two party rule, and as we see with Trump, an autocratic president seems, in reality, pretty ineffectual when the other arms.of government start balking at their demands.
Although as a European I disagree with some specifics of U.S. culture (and also American foreign policy), I have to say U.S. democracy is actually surprisingly strong at the more local level. Lots of states have semi-direct democracy instruments, for example town halls and referenda. People have it in their blood.
I would claim that someone like Trump shows us just how robust western democracy really is (if we survive him, of course!).
Does Chinese propaganda deflect on this? I can only check their English language media, but they don't exactly seem to be trying to keep it a secret:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2017-01/20/content_2801...
>I would claim that someone like Trump shows us just how robust western democracy really is (if we survive him, of course!).
You would claim that because you already believe in democracy in principle. The point is that the current US administration does little to make democracy attractive to people who aren't already in favor of democracy.
Also, the "if we survive him" part clearly contradicts the claim of robustness.
My comment on robustness is a bit tongue and cheek. Democracy provides pressure valves via elections (vs. brittle revolutions), so is a bit more stable than an autocracy, while American government provides further stability via separation of powers and checks and balances. I honestly think we will be ok with Trump, he can't do too much damage on his own, well, except for that whole nuclear football thing.
How do you know this? It's impossible to measure the support for those policies when discussion and criticism of them is not permitted.
There is a way to measure whether policies are actually supported by the people. It's called multi-party elections.
First spoken by Kruschev in his infamous "thawing" address to the party, and repeated apparently verbatim by Gorbachev in his speech announcing Perestroika.
I may have been muddled in the detail, but I only meant to convey the sentiment.
I am prompted to recall this, because of the recent inferno of a high rise in London which claimed a appalling loss of life.
The culprit in the death toll is suspect cladding which massively multiplied the blaze. .
I too lived in such a high rise, formerly a project and since 1994 privately owned.
Anyhow few years ago in our building, two floors above, a similar fire erupted.
Well we're spared inevitable casualties only because the defrauding of the building funds had ensured that the minimum work was completed.
That flat is owned by a kingmaker of British politics and the 2 bedroom apartment had just been moved into by a young Italian woman, who I slack jawed observed receiving 8 beds counting the space in doubles and a sofa bed for good measure for the tiny kitchen. Criminal overcrowding absolutely known by all owners of the properties. Shortly after my life and everything around me was systematically destroyed and I was continually imprisoned upon a forged court order and suffered multiple attacks I was lucky to survive, one clearly engineered with massive coordination of the prison staff, and one time a senior judge point blank telling me to forget about bail or trial.
I'm in total agreement with the necessity of sorting out our so called democracy. We simply don't police the rules that are supposed to protect us, and I am just barely recovering testament to corruption overriding every protection society is supposed to afford to protect the politically privileged while they steal