Hacker News Reader

Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

How did Liu Xiaobo become so important? So much happening for this guy expressing his opinions, wtf?!

If an American or someone from most European countries would express similar opinions wrt his own country's government... nobody would blink a fucking eye, regardless of who gave him what prize...

(And we all know that Nobels for anything except science are 100% bullshit. Heck, I'd even question the relevance of the ones for medicine...)

View on HN

In American high school I learned not just about Nathan Hale and Martin Luther King Jr., but also about Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Sophie Scholl. These figures are famous for the strength of their moral beliefs, the brutality they endured as a result, and their perseverance despite such adversity.

On these points, I think Liu Xiaobo is of equal merit. This would explain his visibility in the West. If students in China aren't taught similar stories or values, then I could understand the difficulty to relate.

Students in China are definitely taught about "figures are famous for the strength of their moral beliefs, the brutality they endured as a result, and their perseverance despite such adversity."

But considering that Liu Xiaobo preached about the inferiority of the Chinese race and how they needed to be colonized by the West for a couple hundred years, they would most likely compare him to an Uncle Tom/Chan type of person.

He risked his neck to advocate peacefully for democracy in Communist China (PRC)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com