Liu Xiaobo, Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, Nobel Peace Prize

By Xah Lee. Date:

Recently, the Language Log has a article on Liu Xiaobo, who recently won Nobel Peace Prize. (Language Log is a popular blog by several linguists, usually focus on language and usage myths sourced from mainstream media.)

〔Liu Xiaobo By Victor Mair. At http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2699 , accessed on 2012-01-22〕

The piece is quite offensive, even worse than standard journalistic ethics as compared to mainstream US media. Basically, spreading anti-China propaganda, with factually incorrect info, biased implications and hints.

I made comments on the blog giving reasons why i find it offensive. This page is expanded version of my reasons.

I don't know Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) till now. I was born and grew up in Taiwan till 14. (but my parents were born in China) I've never set foot on China. On Taiwan/China issue, i tend to support China. I don't know much about politics in China; don't think i ever read one piece of news on China politics in past 20 years… except in recent years have paid some attention to politics of Taiwan (my birth country), due to president Chen Shui-bian' corruption incident.

One of my favorite writer, is Li Ao (李敖), a well known free speech proponent, writer, historian, who is been a political prisoner for 7 or so years by Taiwan's KMT party, in 1960s to 1970s.

My Reasons Against Liu Xiaobo

I read up on Liu Xiaobo for perhaps just half a day recently. I'm against supporting him for several reasons:

I have written many essays documenting my sentiments and findings in the past few years.

If you do spend time to read the following links, try to earnestly look into the opposite side of the coin, else there'd be no point.

General Info

(Between english and chinese Wikipedia versions, i ordered them so that the one with more info comes first. Usually the info quality and quantity difference is large on some chinese subjects. In general, the english version is far better on general chinese related topics (such as history, food, culture, language, etc.) , due to perhaps 1k fold more readers. But on political topics, especially local ones, such as Taiwan or China politics or politicians, often the Chinese version are more informative, because mostly only native Chinese read them, with daily intimate familiarity from newspapers, TV, neighbors, etc, and English version often contains scarce info or article doesn't exist, and just Western point of view based from scarce Western mainstream media articles.)

On US Propaganda

The theme is pretty clear here. In US media and Western media, typically, China is depicted as the evil lord, its citizens live in a suppressive hell, that its citizens want freedom, but the Chinese communists put them in jail, torture them, gun them down. US orgs, such as CIA, send money to support politically disruptive causes and leaders, in the name of supporting US's political ideology the “democracy” and “human rights”, including guerrilla warfare training and weapons. Give public “human rights” awards to these leaders. (but as Li Ao said in one of his lecture, that while he was in jail for 7 or so years for fighting democracy against the KMT, the US didn't support him, because US needed Taiwan's KMT party to fight communists during the cold war era.)

Corruption of Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel prize, especially Peace, is very controversial, and this is a well-established fact. It is often criticized as politically motivated. In many cases, the laureates are considered warmongers by many.

Liu Xiaobo's Attack on Li Ao

To find Liu's articles attacking Li Ao, just web search on: “李敖,刘晓波”.

Here's some of his essay titles:

Why Do I Not Support the “Human Right” Concept?