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Vaisakh E Hari
Vaisakh E Hari

BEIJING

Confucius and the cow: Lessons from a Chinese dissident

FILES-CHINA-RIGHTS-NOBEL-LIU (File) Liu Xiaobo and his wife Liu Xia | AFP
  • The prolific essayist and poet chronicled with a searing pain—almost a cold anger—the political decline of the Chinese state and the atrocities of Tiananmen massacre, which, he rued, had disappeared from the public conscience. He spared no one

The 2010 Nobel peace prize award ceremony was not a run-of-the-mill event. The awardee—academic and poet Liu Xiaobo—was the first Chinese citizen to win the peace award; he became only the second award winner to be honoured while incarcerated. After a few solemn lines by Thorbjoern Jagland, the chairman of the Nobel committee, the citation and medal were placed on an empty chair, signifying the absence of Xiaobo—a dissenter whom the Chinese government sentenced to 11 years in prison under charges of attempting to subvert state authority.

The move antagonised China. Bilateral relations with Norway became the first casualty. The dragon breathed fire, imposing sanctions on salmon exports and suspending trade talks. (In 2016, both countries issued a joint declaration, restoring some semblance of normalcy to their relations). According to media reports, China even tried to censor the image of the empty chair with the nobel citation placed on it.

For the Chinese government, Xiaobo was a turncoat—a 'black hand'—for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that shook the nation and later brutally suppressed by the state military. The pro-democracy protests that had broken out in China were met with overwhelming force. (The movement is best symbolised by the image of an unidentified protester staring down a string of tanks which were rolling down the road). No official death count was released, but the numbers were estimated to range from hundreds to the thousands.

Xiaobo, then a professor in New York, had returned to his homeland and was an active participant in the movement. Thus began a string of arrests (three times to be exact) till his 11-year prison sentence in 2009, almost an year after a group of activists from China (including Liu) released a manifesto 'Charter 08', demanding political reforms and transformation into a liberal, democratic republic. His wife Liu Xia was placed under house arrest.

Fast forward to 2017. When this article was published, after serving almost nine years of his sentence, Xiaobo—the 60-something Elvis Presley of Chinese dissidents—was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer. He was transferred to a hospital, with global leaders calling for his full release. [Reports, on Thursday, claimed that Liu Xiaobo had passed]. 

What can be gleaned from his writings? The prolific essayist and poet chronicled with a searing pain—almost a cold anger—the political decline of the Chinese state and the atrocities of Tiananmen massacre, which, he rued, had disappeared from the public conscience. No one was spared; not Mao Zedong, not Deng Xiaoping, or any other leader that followed. A lesser chronicler's description of these events, devoid of a steely edge that kept overt sentimentality at bay, could have descended—to borrow from Milan Kundera—into kitsch. Interestingly, Kundera's literary contemporary Vaclav Havel was one of the architects of Charter 77, a Czechoslovakian document against the Soviet regime, based on which Xiaobo's Charter 08 was prepared.

An analysis of Xiaobo's various essays and poems (which were collated into a book No Enemies, No Hatred, edited by Perry Link) offer a deep insight into his thoughts. They are near-prophetic for its neighbour and occasional sparring partner, India, now reeling under an upsurge of rightwing forces enabled by the authoritarian dispensation.

In Listen carefully to the voices of the Tiananmen mothers (originally published on the website of New Century News), he lambasted the party, writing, "Among the 182 documented dead in the transcripts, some were people who had never joined the protests, never confronted the troops, and never even gone out to watch the excitement. Yet, bullets randomly took their lives. Among the dead were bystanders, medical professionals, radicals and even young chroniclers who were caught in the line of fire, armed with nothing less than a camera." He bemoaned, with a degree of palpable self-loathing, that the murdered were all commoners; the elites, including himself, escaped unhurt and with prison sentences that seemed like a slap on the wrists compared with what the rest of the population had to endure. It resonates deeply with the Kashmir valley, where excessive force, human shields and indiscriminate use of pellet guns by the Indian military—which resulted in mass blindings—had soured an entire generation of youngsters.

In Yesterday's stray dog becomes today's guard dog (originally published in boxun.com), he pointed out the Chinese attempts to expand soft power by aggressively promoting Confucianism as a form of cultural identity. Confucianism, a tremendously popular philosophy (even the official religion of China) in the country's early stages, was purged by Chairman Mao in his 'Cultural Revolution'. According to him, restoring the tradition of venerating Confucius as a sage, fit hand-in-glove with their agenda of promoting radical nationalism. He points out the barrage of fake news attempting to lionise the thinker. How does it differ much from the Indian administration and its espousal of Hindutva cultural icons, Yoga (soft power) and beef. True, India has never, in its history, an imperialist power; but the insistence of cultural homogeneity—a Hindu nation—by BJP's sister organisations like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is in plain, public light.

In Spiritual landscape of urban young in post-totalitarian China (originally published in Kaifang), he spoke out against the "forcible political amnesia" that affected the post-Tiananmen massacre generation of youngsters, citing rising statistics of pragmatic youngsters seeking to join the Communist party. A frightening public apathy was visible when minorities were lynched by mobs, for reasons as simple as consuming beef.

TOPSHOT-HONG KONG-CHINA-RIGHTS-NOBEL Representational image | AFP

"In China, there has always been a strong tradition of dissent, especially in the late 1970s when the dissident movement became a mode of political expression," says T.G. Suresh, Associate Professor at the Centre of Political Studies in Jawaharal Nehru University, who specialised in Chinese studies. "What we need to understand is that China always had a financial momentum. The economic upliftment in households are clearly visible. Unlike the 1970s or 1980s, the party today enjoys a far greater legitimacy in the eyes of the public. The emotional connect, which their citizens had with democracy, exists no more."

Confucianism, a philosophy rooted in hierarchy, can never exist in China in its older form, he argues. Not with its burgeoning economy and emergence of women as key players (a large number of female millionaires hail from China). "The Chinese government is promoting the philosophy as a defining identity, setting up Confucian institutes across the world. While, economically, they are a force to reckon with, they lack in soft power. What they aim for is the cultural export of Confucianism, like the influence that the US wields through Hollywood and pop culture."

"The media usually invokes the fierce dragon to represent China. A dragon, in Chinese culture, is very different. They are trying to rectify that negative image by reinventing the panda, which is more appealing as a cultural icon, " he says.

Ring a bell?

But, as they say, even the best laid plans.....You could popularise Yoga throughout the world and try to jettison the long-time image of an elephant for a roaring lion proudly proclaiming India's manufacturing credentials, but all it takes is a murderous mob of rampaging bovine lovers to blast the country back into the stone age—a nation of fanatics and snake charmers.

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Topics : #China

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