What does the Chinese regime’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo tell us about the regime itself? The way the Chinese government treated Liu at the end was gratuitously cruel. They denied treatment for liver cancer until it was too late for him to survive, then put on a propaganda show of providing palliative treatment, and invaded his and his wife’s privacy to circulate videos of their last moments together. After Liu died, the regime forced his widow, Liu Xia, to disappear, and as I write this she still not free.
But these were just the final acts in a long series of cruelties. The regime gave Liu an extreme 11 year sentence merely for exercising his rights, subjected Liu Xia to an illegal, ruthless, and maddening house arrest for the entire time of Xiaobo’s imprisonment, punished Norway diplomatically and economically for being the host country for the committee that awarded Liu the Nobel Peace Prize, and blocked all mention of Liu and his doings from domestic media, so that few Chinese people today know anything about him. After his death the government cremated his body and forced his widow to scatter the ashes at sea so that there could be no place of pilgrimage for those who would wish to remember him.
Liu’s case was uniquely prominent internationally, but not unique as a case of repression in China. Many have suffered excessive punishment for peaceful and moderate acts. Xu Zhiyong served a four year prison term for having led a “New Citizens’ Movement” that used peaceful, lawful methods to try to promote rule of law. Since his release he has disappeared from public view, which hints at what he must have suffered in prison. The “rights protection” movement of lawyers and activists tried to use the Chinese courts to protect victims of rights abuses; some 300 were rounded up in July 2015 and a number still remain in jail or in custody. Feminist activists demonstrated against sexual harassment and domestic violence; five were arrested in 2015. The poet Lang Zi (Wu Mingliang) was recently arrested for writing poetry memorializing Liu Xiaobo, and a person who printed some of his work (Peng Heping) was arrested and charged with “illegal business activity.”
While conditions in Chinese jails are bad in general, human rights and democracy activists are, like Liu, often singled out for harsh treatment and denial of medical care. In 2014 human rights activist Cao Shunli died in detention just before she was scheduled to go to Geneva to testify at the UN Human Rights Council. Tibetan monk Tenzin Delek Rinpoche died in prison after mistreatment in 2015. In 2016 the sister of imprisoned human rights lawyer Guo Feixiong reported that his medical condition was deteriorating and he was being denied medical treatment. Examples could be multiplied.
Why does such a strong regime, which as I write this is heading triumphantly into its 19th Party Congress with a 6.7% growth rate, 3-trillion-plus dollars of foreign exchange and a vast domestic market ; a regime that is able to buy influence from Australia to Greece to Cambridge University Press; a regime with total control of domestic media, academia, and public opinion; a regime that by all appearances has succeeding in purging all opposition within the Party and is preparing to crown its head as supreme leader of everything and apotheosize his thought in the Party constitution – why is this regime so scared of those few who dare to criticize it openly?
This is the central paradox of the Chinese regime. It really is strong, in my opinion. It is hard to know for sure, but the elite appears authentically unified around Xi Jinping, economic growth is sustainable, popular support is real, and the many problems that exist are being skillfully managed. Yet the regime remembers Tiananmen, the collapse of the Soviet Union, riots in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, and the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. And from this sequence of events it draws the lesson that its political support is fragile.
For a regime like this, I believe such a judgment is correct. By choice and design, this is a structurally isolated regime. The ruling, Leninist vanguard party, the Chinese Communist Party, consists of about 6% of the population. The reason it is a vanguard party is that it doesn’t trust those whom it calls “the masses.” It doesn’t trust them to vote. It doesn’t trust them to write. It doesn’t trust them to think. It doesn’t trust professors to analyze politics, students to figure out for themselves what they think, journalists to report on official wrong doing, or judges to decide political cases.
Who then can supervise the party? The party’s answer is, “the party can supervise itself.” But the party doesn’t really trust even itself, because it suspects so many of its own members of misdoings – corruption, ambition, opportunism, abuse of power; it even suspects its own members – despite their constant training in right thinking – of wrong thinking.
We must admit that in recent years the performance of the Chinese system has been impressive, and the performance of Western democratic systems has been poor. But the grotesque abuse of Liu Xiaobo, and of so many other people less well known than Liu, throws a sharp light on the core weakness of the Chinese type of system. Liu Xiaobo famously said that he had no enemies. But the vanguard authoritarian regime, by its nature, has many enemies.
Andrew J. Nathan
This is a version of remarks that were delivered at a symposium on “Liu Xiaobo and the Future of China,” at the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C., on September 7, 2017.
黎安友：刘晓波之死和中国当局的恐惧
中国当局对刘晓波的处理告诉我们有关这个政权自身的什么问题呢？中国政府最后处理刘晓波的方式无端地残忍。当局对肝癌的治疗为时已晚，使他无法存活，然后披露了一个提供治标不治本治疗的宣传画面，并侵犯他夫妻的隐私，传播他们最后时刻在一起的视频。刘晓波去世后，当局迫使其遗孀刘霞失踪，到我写这篇文字时，她仍未获自由。
但这些都不过是一长系列残忍画面的最后几幅。中国当局对刘晓波处以十一年徒刑，仅因他行使了权利；在晓波遭监禁的整个时期，对刘霞疯狂无情地非法软禁；对挪威进行外交和经济惩罚，因它是授予刘诺贝尔和平奖的诺贝尔委员会的东道国；在国内媒体上完全封杀提到刘晓波及其所作所为，以至今天没有多少中国人知道他的任何事。在他去世后，政府火化了他的尸体，迫使其遗孀将骨灰洒在海上，以使那些希望记住他的人不可能有朝圣之地。
刘晓波的个案在国际上独一无二，但作为中国镇压的案例并不独特。很多人都因和平温和的行为遭受过度惩罚。许志永在监狱服刑四年，只因他领导了“新公民运动”，以合法的和平方式试图推动法治。他自获释以来就从公众视野中消失了，暗示他一定在监狱里遭受了什么。律师和活动人士的“权利保障”运动曾试图用中国法院来保护侵权行为的受害者，但在2015年7月，约有300人被圈起（逮捕、刑事拘留、传唤、短期限制人身自由或下落不明。），其中一些人仍然被监禁或拘留。女权主义活动者反对性骚扰和家庭暴力，五人于2015年被捕。诗人浪子（吴明良）最近因写作纪念刘晓波的诗而被捕，印制刘晓波部分作品的人（彭和平）因涉嫌“非法经营活动”被捕。
中国监狱的条件一般都很糟，像刘晓波一样，人权和民运活动人士经常被挑出来加以严处并拒绝医疗。2014年，维权人士曹顺利在计划去日内瓦在联合国人权理事会作证前被捕后死亡。2015年，西藏僧人丹增德勒仁波切在遭受虐待后死于狱中。2016年，据人权律师郭飞雄的姐姐报道说，他在狱中病情恶化，被拒绝接受治疗。这类例子还可成倍列举。
如此强大的政权为何这么恐惧呢？在我写此文时，中国正以6.7％的增长率、3万多亿美元的外币兑换和巨大的国内市场要顺利地进入中共十九大；一个能够从澳大利亚到希腊到剑桥大学出版社购买影响力的政权，一个完全控制了国内媒体、学界和舆论的政权，一个全面看来成功地清除了党内所有反对派、正淮备加冕凌驾一切的最高领袖并使其思想在党章中脱颖而出的政权，这个政权为何如此恐惧那么几个敢于公开批评的人呢？
这就是中国政权的中心悖论。在我看来它真的强大。尽管难以确定，但是精英们似乎真的团结在习近平周围，经济增长可持续，民众支持也真实，现存许多问题都在巧妙地处置。然而，这个政权记得天安门事件，苏联崩溃，西藏和新疆骚乱，香港雨伞运动，以及台湾太阳花运动。从这一系列事件中，它汲取了其政治支持脆弱的教训。
对于像这样的一个政权，我相信如此判断正确。通过选择和设计，这是一个在结构上孤立的政权。作为列宁主义先锋队统治的中国共产党，占人口的6％左右。它之作为先锋队的原因，就在于它不信任“群众”。它不信任他们投票，不信任他们写作，不信任他们思考，不信任教授们分析政治，不信任学生们自己弄清他们想什么，不信任记者们报道官方的错误做法，也不信任法官们判决政治案例。
谁能监督党呢？该党的答案是“党能监督自己”。然而，该党本身并不自信，因为它怀疑自己有那么多党员犯错——腐败、野心、机会主义、滥用权力；它甚至怀疑自己的党员，尽管他们不断以正确思维—错误思维进行培训。
我们必须承认，近年来中国制度的表现令人印象深刻，而西方民主制度的表现一直很差。 但是，对刘晓波莫名其妙的虐待，以及对其他比刘更默默无闻者的虐待，曝光显现这个中国式制度的核心弱点。 刘晓波的名言是，他没有敌人；但这个专制先锋政权，就其本质而言，有许多敌人。
2017年9月26日
本文基于作者2017年9月7日在美国民主基金会于华盛顿举行的“刘晓波与中国未来”研讨会上的发言。本刊经黎安友教授授权翻译并发表。
（译者：张裕）
JOD NED Liu Xiaobo 2017 for CSA
2017.09.26
What does the Chinese regime’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo tell us about the regime itself? The way the Chinese government treated Liu at the end was gratuitously cruel. They denied treatment for liver cancer until it was too late for him to survive, then put on a propaganda show of providing palliative treatment, and invaded his and his wife’s privacy to circulate videos of their last moments together. After Liu died, the regime forced his widow, Liu Xia, to disappear, and as I write this she still not free.
But these were just the final acts in a long series of cruelties. The regime gave Liu an extreme 11 year sentence merely for exercising his rights, subjected Liu Xia to an illegal, ruthless, and maddening house arrest for the entire time of Xiaobo’s imprisonment, punished Norway diplomatically and economically for being the host country for the committee that awarded Liu the Nobel Peace Prize, and blocked all mention of Liu and his doings from domestic media, so that few Chinese people today know anything about him. After his death the government cremated his body and forced his widow to scatter the ashes at sea so that there could be no place of pilgrimage for those who would wish to remember him.
Liu’s case was uniquely prominent internationally, but not unique as a case of repression in China. Many have suffered excessive punishment for peaceful and moderate acts. Xu Zhiyong served a four year prison term for having led a “New Citizens’ Movement” that used peaceful, lawful methods to try to promote rule of law. Since his release he has disappeared from public view, which hints at what he must have suffered in prison. The “rights protection” movement of lawyers and activists tried to use the Chinese courts to protect victims of rights abuses; some 300 were rounded up in July 2015 and a number still remain in jail or in custody. Feminist activists demonstrated against sexual harassment and domestic violence; five were arrested in 2015. The poet Lang Zi (Wu Mingliang) was recently arrested for writing poetry memorializing Liu Xiaobo, and a person who printed some of his work (Peng Heping) was arrested and charged with “illegal business activity.”
While conditions in Chinese jails are bad in general, human rights and democracy activists are, like Liu, often singled out for harsh treatment and denial of medical care. In 2014 human rights activist Cao Shunli died in detention just before she was scheduled to go to Geneva to testify at the UN Human Rights Council. Tibetan monk Tenzin Delek Rinpoche died in prison after mistreatment in 2015. In 2016 the sister of imprisoned human rights lawyer Guo Feixiong reported that his medical condition was deteriorating and he was being denied medical treatment. Examples could be multiplied.
Why does such a strong regime, which as I write this is heading triumphantly into its 19th Party Congress with a 6.7% growth rate, 3-trillion-plus dollars of foreign exchange and a vast domestic market ; a regime that is able to buy influence from Australia to Greece to Cambridge University Press; a regime with total control of domestic media, academia, and public opinion; a regime that by all appearances has succeeding in purging all opposition within the Party and is preparing to crown its head as supreme leader of everything and apotheosize his thought in the Party constitution – why is this regime so scared of those few who dare to criticize it openly?
This is the central paradox of the Chinese regime. It really is strong, in my opinion. It is hard to know for sure, but the elite appears authentically unified around Xi Jinping, economic growth is sustainable, popular support is real, and the many problems that exist are being skillfully managed. Yet the regime remembers Tiananmen, the collapse of the Soviet Union, riots in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, and the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan. And from this sequence of events it draws the lesson that its political support is fragile.
For a regime like this, I believe such a judgment is correct. By choice and design, this is a structurally isolated regime. The ruling, Leninist vanguard party, the Chinese Communist Party, consists of about 6% of the population. The reason it is a vanguard party is that it doesn’t trust those whom it calls “the masses.” It doesn’t trust them to vote. It doesn’t trust them to write. It doesn’t trust them to think. It doesn’t trust professors to analyze politics, students to figure out for themselves what they think, journalists to report on official wrong doing, or judges to decide political cases.
Who then can supervise the party? The party’s answer is, “the party can supervise itself.” But the party doesn’t really trust even itself, because it suspects so many of its own members of misdoings – corruption, ambition, opportunism, abuse of power; it even suspects its own members – despite their constant training in right thinking – of wrong thinking.
We must admit that in recent years the performance of the Chinese system has been impressive, and the performance of Western democratic systems has been poor. But the grotesque abuse of Liu Xiaobo, and of so many other people less well known than Liu, throws a sharp light on the core weakness of the Chinese type of system. Liu Xiaobo famously said that he had no enemies. But the vanguard authoritarian regime, by its nature, has many enemies.
Andrew J. Nathan
This is a version of remarks that were delivered at a symposium on “Liu Xiaobo and the Future of China,” at the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C., on September 7, 2017.
转自：民主中国