Liu Xiaobo's Empty Chair

Liu Xiaobo's Empty Chair
Author: Perry Link
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 94
Release: 2011-05-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1590174771

When the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced it was awarding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese literary critic and human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, it made special note of his role in writing a remarkable political manifesto called Charter 08. In China, that same document has caused officials to throw him in jail with an 11-year sentence that is extraordinary even by Chinese standards, while taking drastic measures to silence any mention of the text. But what is Charter 08 and why has it made Liu such a threat to the Chinese government? Perry Link, a Professor of Chinese literature who has worked closely with the Chinese dissidents who wrote the charter with Liu, for the first time brings together a full English translation of this powerful document and an incisive new profile of Liu himself with a series of short essays chronicling his arrest, show-trial, and imprisonment and the crackdown on the Charter 08 movement since its courageous beginnings two years ago. In an epilogue, Link draws on leaked government documents to reveal Beijing's nervous response to the Arab uprisings in the spring of 2011.

No Enemies, No Hatred

No Enemies, No Hatred
Author: Xiaobo Liu
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2012-01-16
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0674071948

When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on December 10, 2010, its recipient, Liu Xiaobo, was in Jinzhou Prison, serving an eleven-year sentence for what Beijing called “incitement to subvert state power.” In Oslo, actress Liv Ullmann read a long statement the activist had prepared for his 2009 trial. It read in part: “I stand by the convictions I expressed in my ‘June Second Hunger Strike Declaration’ twenty years ago—I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies.” That statement is one of the pieces in this book, which includes writings spanning two decades, providing insight into all aspects of Chinese life. These works not only chronicle a leading dissident’s struggle against tyranny but enrich the record of universal longing for freedom and dignity. Liu speaks pragmatically, yet with deep-seated passion, about peasant land disputes, the Han Chinese in Tibet, child slavery, the CCP’s Olympic strategy, the Internet in China, the contemporary craze for Confucius, and the Tiananmen massacre. Also presented are poems written for his wife, Liu Xia, public documents, and a foreword by Václav Havel. This collection is an aid to reflection for Western readers who might take for granted the values Liu has dedicated his life to achieving for his homeland.

The Journey of Liu Xiaobo

The Journey of Liu Xiaobo
Author: Democratic China
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2020-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1640122249

As a fearless poet and prolific essayist and critic, Liu Xiaobo became one of the most important dissident thinkers in the People’s Republic of China. His nonviolent activism steered the nation’s prodemocracy currents from Tiananmen Square to support for Tibet and beyond. Liu undertook perhaps his bravest act when he helped draft and gather support for Charter 08, a democratic vision for China that included free elections and the end of the Communist Party’s monopoly on power. While imprisoned for “inciting subversion of state power,” Liu won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. He was granted medical parole just weeks before dying of cancer in 2017. The Journey of Liu Xiaobo draws together essays and reflections on the “Nelson Mandela of China.” The Dalai Lama, artist and activist Ai Weiwei, and a distinguished list of leading Chinese writers and intellectuals, including Zhang Zuhua, the main drafter of Charter 08, and Liu Xia, the wife of Liu Xiaobo, and noted China scholars, journalists, and political leaders from around the globe, including Yu Ying-shih, Perry Link, Andrew J. Nathan, Marco Rubio, and Chris Smith illuminate Liu’s journey from his youth and student years, through his indispensable activism, and to his defiant last days. Many of the pieces were written immediately after Liu’s death, adding to the emotions stirred by his loss. Original and powerful, The Journey of Liu Xiaobo combines memory with insightful analysis to evaluate Liu’s impact on his era, nation, and the cause of human freedom.

Steel Gate to Freedom

Steel Gate to Freedom
Author: Yu Jie
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2015-07-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442237147

On December 10, 2010, on stage in Oslo City Hall, an empty chair sat before more than one thousand people, holding only the medal and diploma of the year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. A larger-than-life photo of a smiling Liu Xiaobo hung in the background. This striking image is now known throughout the world. But who is Liu Xiaobo? For the first time, this biographyby renowned Chinese author and close friend Yu Jie offers a first-hand look into the man behind the empty chair. Dissident, prisoner, poet, scholar, Liu was compelled by intolerable circumstances to embark on a campaign of intellectual dissent, becoming in the course of his journey a leading human rights activist and one of the most important political figures in modern history. In the quarter century since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Liu has been unable to lead a normal life. In thisfirst authorized biography, Yu traces an extraordinary man’s odyssey, from growing up in the northeast and Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, through his meteoric rise in Beijing’s intellectual circles and his pivotal role in the Tiananmen protests and subsequent imprisonments, to the founding of the controversial Independent Chinese PEN and groundbreaking Charter 08, his poignant relationship with wife Liu Xia, and winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. It is also a love story between two poets who, though separated by three hundred miles and eleven years behind bars, are united in their persistence to speak truth to power, inspiring countless others.

The People's Republic of Amnesia

The People's Republic of Amnesia
Author: Louisa Lim
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199347700

"One of the best analyses of the impact of Tiananmen throughout China in the years since 1989." --The New York Times Book Review

Bloodlands

Bloodlands
Author: Timothy Snyder
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2012-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0465032974

From the author of the international bestseller On Tyranny, the definitive history of Hitler’s and Stalin’s politics of mass killing, explaining why Ukraine has been at the center of Western history for the last century. Americans call the Second World War “the Good War.” But before it even began, America’s ally Stalin had killed millions of his own citizens—and kept killing them during and after the war. Before Hitler was defeated, he had murdered six million Jews and nearly as many other Europeans. At war’s end, German and Soviet killing sites fell behind the Iron Curtain, leaving the history of mass killing in darkness. Assiduously researched, deeply humane, and utterly definitive, Bloodlands is a new kind of European history, presenting the mass murders committed by the Nazi and Stalinist regimes as two aspects of a single story. With a new afterword addressing the relevance of these events to the contemporary decline of democracy, Bloodlands is required reading for anyone seeking to understand the central tragedy of modern history and its meaning today.

Blood Letters

Blood Letters
Author: Lian Xi
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2018-03-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1541644220

The staggering story of the most important Chinese political dissident of the Mao era, a devout Christian who was imprisoned, tortured, and executed by the regime Blood Letters tells the astonishing tale of Lin Zhao, a poet and journalist arrested by the authorities in 1960 and executed eight years later, at the height of the Cultural Revolution. The only Chinese citizen known to have openly and steadfastly opposed communism under Mao, she rooted her dissent in her Christian faith -- and expressed it in long, prophetic writings done in her own blood, and at times on her clothes and on cloth torn from her bedsheets. Miraculously, Lin Zhao's prison writings survived, though they have only recently come to light. Drawing on these works and others from the years before her arrest, as well as interviews with her friends, her classmates, and other former political prisoners, Lian Xi paints an indelible portrait of courage and faith in the face of unrelenting evil.

The Broken Mirror

The Broken Mirror
Author: Motofumi Asai
Publisher: Chicago : St. James Press
Total Pages: 568
Release: 1990
Genre: History
ISBN:

Little Emperors and Material Girls

Little Emperors and Material Girls
Author: Jemimah Steinfeld
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 75
Release: 2015-02-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0857736620

China is the world's fastest-growing economic powerhouse. Everybody knows this. But behind the headlines a once-in-a-generation sexual and cultural revolution is taking place - all in the bars, cafes and streets of China's growing mega-cities. Welcome to this new China. Writer and journalist Jemimah Steinfeld meets the young people behind the world's fastest-moving nation to unveil their attitudes towards love, life and sexuality. Young Chinese have new words to describe the world they live in: 'little emperors' - single men who have grown up under the one child policy - they're bossy and selfish; 'bare branches' - those without children; 'leftovers' - women over twenty-six who aren't married; 'comrade' - how the gay community identifies itself; 'love markets' - weekend gatherings across China where parents attempt to find husbands and wives for their children, and others show up to match-make young singles and even offer boyfriends for hire.Jemimah Steinfeld introduces the people at the heart of this world, from the woman starting China's first online dating agency to the mistresses of the rich and powerful; from the company trying to sell sex toys to China's middle-classes to the sino-punks of Beijing's bar scene. Little Emperors and Material Girls is the book which will change the way you see China.

An Anatomy of Chinese

An Anatomy of Chinese
Author: Perry Link
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2013-02-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0674067681

Rhythms, conceptual metaphors, and political language convey meanings of which Chinese speakers themselves may not be aware. Link’s Anatomy of Chinese contributes to the debate over whether language shapes thought or vice versa, and its comparison of English with Chinese lends support to theories that locate the origins of language in the brain.