Liu Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo is dead. Who the hell is Liu Xiaobo?

A pyschopathic status maximizer from Northeast China. Or may I say a high-IQ status-greedy sociopath. Or a shameless self-promoter taking money from USG to undermine his own nation?

Or in one word: an activist. Liu Xiaobo was a student activist from the 1980s. The 1980s were a very delicate time in China. Mao was dead. Deng Xiaoping had opened up the country. The old order was shattered; and when a country is in disorder, the status-hunters smell weakness. They saw blood. And so they started agitating. Writing articles on how backward China was. How utterly rotten and corrupt and just smelly it was, compared to the utopia in the West. Western governments obviously encouraged the agitation. They gave money and resources. This agitation culminated in the 1989 Tiananmen protests. Liu Xiaobo was there, showing his teeth, ready to destroy the government and take their place. To gain the supreme status he knew he deserved. Everybody thought that the government would fall, and a new state would have to be built on Western standards. A new state led by themselves, of course.

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But no, that didn't happen. The little old man had a pair, and he sent the tanks. Most of the psychopathic status maximizers fled. But Liu Xiaobo didn't. The guy isn't just some run of the mill leftist activist. He's a stubborn son of a bitch. He stayed, doubled down on his writing about how China is bad and corrupt and evil and nasty and everything Western is honey and spice and everything nice. He was sent to jail, again and again. And while he went abroad every now and then to pick up some Western money, he always returned to China. He just couldn't believe that China wouldn't bow down to his majesty and just hand him the status he deserves. Surely these evil pigs won't send me to jail again?! Not when I have USG behind me?

To jail he went. He was given a damn Noble Peace prize. To jail he went. China doesn't care. Well, China cares more than it should. China has signed all those bogus Human Rights Treatises. But they just wouldn't release Liu Xiaobo. This guy is evil. This guy wasn't just some prog activist; he was a traitor of comical proportions. The guy was just surreal. Even some Western leftists, at the Guardian no less, just couldn't believe how big a traitor this guy was. See some things he said:

In a 1988 interview with Hong Kong's Liberation Monthly (now known as Open Magazine), Liu was asked what it would take for China to realize a true historical transformation. He replied:

This comment by itself just lost him all the local support he could have enjoyed just by being propped up by Western propaganda. How could you call for the colonization of your own country? 300 years! This guy is insane. Just how much of a Western stooge was he?

Known for his pro-West stance, Liu once stated in an interview: "Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there's no middle ground... Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race" [24]

You'd have to go to Stormfront to find this kind of hyperbole even this side of the world. A Western life is a human life. Everything else is not barbaric; it's not even human. Ok dude, you're gonna make a lot of friends that way.

He also faulted a television documentary, He Shang, or River Elegy, for not thoroughly criticising Chinese culture and not advocating westernisation enthusiastically enough: “If I were to make this I would show just how wimpy, spineless and fucked-up [weisuo, ruanruo, caodan] the Chinese really are”. Liu considered it most unfortunate that his monolingualism bound him in a dialogue with something “very benighted [yumei] and philistine [yongsu],” the Chinese cultural sphere. Harvard researcher Lin Tongqi noted that an early 1990s book by Liu contains “pungent attacks on the Chinese national character”.

So China is wimpy and fucked-up, the West is this awesome utopia; but the guy was monolingual? What the hell? Oh wait. This isn't about logical consistency. This isn't about careful thought on the issues. This is a guy who just saw that the Communist Party had loosen his grip on Chinese society and wanted to crack a wedge into the system so he could come up with more status than he had. And he chose to worship the West because that was the zeitgeist: Communism was collapsing everywhere, and the West was way stronger. So odds are the West would sponsor him some time or another. And voila, USG gave him millions. For which the guy was grateful. 2,000 years of Confucianism don't go away so easily. Chinese intellectuals know to be loyal.

in his article Lessons from the Cold War, Liu argues that "The free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights … The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible." During the 2004 US presidential election, Liu warmly praised George Bush for his war effort against Iraq and condemned Democratic party candidate John Kerry for not sufficiently supporting the US's wars:Liu also published a 2004 article in support of Bush's war on Iraq, titled "Victory to the Anglo-American Freedom Alliance", in which he praised the U.S.-led post-Cold Warconflicts as "best examples of how war should be conducted in a modern civilization." He wrote "regardless of the savagery of the terrorists, and regardless of the instability of Iraq's situation, and, what's more, regardless of how patriotic youth might despise proponents of the United States such as myself, my support for the invasion of Iraq will not waver. Just as, from the beginning, I believed that the military intervention of Britain and the United States would be victorious, I am still full of belief in the final victory of the Freedom Alliance and the democratic future of Iraq, and even if the armed forces of Britan and the United States should encounter some obstacles such as those that they are curently facing, this belief of mine will not change." He predicted "a free, democratic and peaceful Iraq will emerge."[29]

Unwavering support for the War on Iraq. He the Noble Peace Prize winner. Why? Convictions? Or because Bush was paying his salary?

At any rate, the guy is dead. Inside China. All the Bluegov empire ("the international community") pressure didn't work. Now I don't know who coordinates this kind of operations, but guys, if you want to have influence in China. You're doing it wrong. Finding a complete asshole like this guy just won't get you any popularity in China. Or anywhere else, really. I mean just look at the guy and his... wife. Or something.

NOBEL-PEACE/LIU

The US has the most advanced marketing PR apparatus in the whole world. They know how to promote stuff. Why are they so inept when it comes to political influence abroad? A hot teenage girl or a smooth homo could actually accomplish a lot of progressive agitation in China today. But nah, Bluegov keeps picking up these ugly sociopath nerds who offer themselves to them. Well, you reap what you saw.

[…] Liu Xiaobo […]

This is the obituary Liu Xiaobo deserves.

"Modernization means whole-sale westernization" Where is this not true? The most non-Western places are the most anti-modern.

Tiananmen seems so long ago, yet one remembers it like it was yesterday. Tiananmen. Berlin. 1989. What a time! That that time and this time should be encompassed in a mere thirty years is surreal. Thirty years on, one almost envies the Chinese their regime. Suppose that Americans like me now go to New York's Times Square to demand the termination of democracy. Will the regime send the tanks?

NY Times: "Mr. Liu was punished not for a crime, but for giving voice to the most basic human yearnings. A courageous man of conscience."

[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]

Projection maybe? Treasonous sentiment towards the homeland signals high status in the US. Maybe Bluegov thinks that's some kind of universal?

John Derbyshire has lived in China and speaks and reads modern and classical Mandarin. I am quite certain he would describe your account as tendentious. Not all autocrats are good. In fact, most are bad. The Chi Coms are both bad and incompetent. NRx looks ridiculous when it can't tell the difference between regimes.

Now that you mention it, Derbyshire does speak and read Mandarin, doesn't he? And he does regard the Chi Coms as both bad and incompetent. Derb is probably right. Yet the Chi Coms aren't replacing their own people.

So what? Japan does things it's own way.

Where did I say the Chinese government is awesome? That said, Derbyshire's Chinese isn't very good. I'll eat my pants if he actually reads Classical Chinese.

Derbyshire is just another Arthur Waldron when it comes comes China. A neocon weirdo married to a Chinese woman who fancies himself an expert because of this. I haven't taken Derbyshire seriously since he complained about Chinese men having the temerity to have national and racial pride and denounced them as "fascists".

Meh, he was still less crazy than Kang Youwei

I'll give you that. Kang Youwei was also way smarter than this guy.

Interesting. It seems that Liu's status maximising didn't work so well after 1989. Trying to be holier than everyone else works only among people who share your Religion. His Religion was Western progressivism, which apparently is not a religion widely shared in China. So he couldn't get much status in China, but quite a lot amongst his Western co-religionists. Sure, in 1989 things could have turned out differently. There was (maybe still is-don't know anything about China) a chance for establishing progressivsim as the dominant Religion in China. Your comment about the US having the most advanced PR apparatus is only partly correct. This apparatus is very adept at promoting stuff to members of mainstream US culture. It still works, but not quite that well in Europe or Australia. It works even less well in China. If you want to produce effective propaganda, you have to understand the culture of the people you want to influence. Understaning other cultures isn't a strong point of the Cathedral

Impertinence. Nonsense. Are you sure that you are not half-confusing the great John Derbyshire with someone else? Look again. If your complaint is that Derb has been wrong about something, why, Derb has been wrong about many things. He has never pretended otherwise. That's what happens when one experiments with lots of cool ideas ahead of their time. You are not required to take Derb seriously, of course. Derb doesn't. However, I don't remember Derb ever "fancy[ing] himself an expert" on anything. Do you?

It isn't much to ask to abstain from writing about what one knows little about. And Derbyshire just doesn't know a lot about China. At any rate in this blog we cut China some slack because we don't want world government under a unanimous progressive establishment. And right now China is the only thing stopping that from happening. Derbyshire would be wise to follow this idea, as much as he might dislike the place, which is of course his prerogative.

Proposing democracy for China, some kind of multi-party regime, is not exactly inviting foreign colonization. Competing parties and free press could limit China's systemic corruption.

Your advice is sound, as usual: It isn’t much to ask to abstain from writing about what one knows little about. One who repeatedly insists on writing about what he knows little about is, approximately by definition, asinine. I would not remotely call Derb that, though. One accepts that you have another view of China, of course. For all I know, your view may be right. Lacking a basis to form a view of my own, I just read you both.

He explicitly invites foreign colonization. For centuries. Systemic corruption is a funny thing. I'd rather have that and not the modern western press.