Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his “long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China,” the Norway Nobel Committee said. Immediately following the announcement, Chinese government denounced the city of Oslo fiercely, threatening that it would affect the relationship between Norway and China.
However, Chinese citizens, with its range of intellectuals and grass-root netizens, hailed Liu’s winning of the prize. More than 100 writers, lawyers, activists and students initiated a signed letter urging the government to free Liu Xiaobo and other political criminals. They pleaded with the government to “abolish the crime of incitement to subvert state power,” as suggested in Liu’s Charter 08, which sentenced him to 11 years in jail in 2009. Netizens from Shenzhen to Beijing immediately organized parties and gatherings to celebrate the first Nobel Prize Mainland China has won since its establishment just as when the Chinese honored Yang Liwei, the first Chinese spaceman who stepped out of the Shenzhou-5.
It’s no surprise that the exiled Dalai Lama, the U.S. President Barack Obama, the Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, France, Germany, Norway and other Western countries greeted Liu the minute he won the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s worth contemplating when most of China’s countrymen are taking the opposite side against the government.
Chinese people and the government had been craving winning a Nobel Prize for many decades. I remember the childhood stories about the clever Alfred Bernhard Nobel who invented the dynamite and the childhood dreams to be an inventor like Nobel. I remember the Nobel Prize sections media organizations published to discuss the Nobel Prize winners, their works and commentary about why China had never received one. I remember whenever Chen Ning Yang (Franklin Yang), a Chinese American who won the Nobel Prize in physics, came to visit China, there would always be a question, “When do you think China will win a Nobel Prize?”
But today, the Nobel Prize is a sensitive phrase! Along with the denouncement, the Chinese government canceled all news reports about Liu winning the prize and removed the Nobel Prize sections of the major portal websites such as Sina.com, Tencent.com and Sohu.com.
The Nobel Peace Prize used to be equally important to the Chinese and Chinese government. Winning a Nobel Prize suggested the recognition of Chinese education and the Party’s governing ideas from the Western world. It proved that China is a nation of great people–a nation that is not only economically strong but also, possesses brainpower. However, Oslo’s prize award to the dissident Liu Xiaobo indicates a disappointment of the international society towards the education and the governing ideas of which the government is proud.
For the first time, the international disappointment didn’t trigger Chinese nationalism. The government’s news-silencing strategy failed to blind the people, but rather, generated more fury against the information control and garnered sympathy for Liu Xiaobo. Most Chinese people, like me, rarely knew Liu Xiaobo before he won the prize. Yet, in the greeting webpage of Nobelprize.org, Chinese individuals and organizations flocked to congratulate him:
“Congratulations from a migrant worker in Shenzhen.”
“Great congratulation to Mr. Liu Xiaobo winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize from Graduate School of Tsinghua University [the top university in China].”
“Congratulations from Qingdao University of Science and Technology.”
People stand beside Liu Xiaobo largely, if not solely based on Oslo’s statement of “his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” Perhaps they don’t know what Liu has done, or they don’t bother to know since their voices, as Liu Xiaobo’s, have been suppressed. They can’t even type “Liu Xiaobo” in Renren.com, the Chinese Facebook. I changed my status in Renren.com to, “Liu Xiaobo cried ‘I am innocent’ when he was taken away from the court in 2009,” but several minutes later when I opened that webpage again, it was erased with a notice sent to me saying, “The content is not suitable to be published in this website.”
The Nobel Peace Prize may carry political tensions. It may be a tool that the Western world utilizes to leverage against China, as the Chinese government and its supporters warn. However, as a Chinese proverb “Try to cover something up only to make it more conspicuous” from Yu Gai Mi Zhang suggests, the more the government tries to keep its people away from the inconvenient truth through censorship, the more cynical people will become toward the government.
China is developing, not only economically but also intellectually. With the increasing number of people getting linked to the Internet, it will become more and more difficult for a government to create boundaries for people, especially the youth, the future of China, from getting the truth.
Wake up, Chinese government! I won’t say Liu is right in advocating “a federated republic” concerning the future of China. If there is a future, the future is at the hands of the youth, as said Mao Zedong. What’s the point of limiting the right to freedom of speech, which is guaranteed by the Chinese Constitution, and letting the youth stand against you?
