New York: Columbia University Press, 2023. 568 pp. US$35.00, cloth; US$34.00, ebook. ISBN 9780231206341.
An authoritative biography of Liu Xiaobo is necessary for providing absolute clarity regarding the evolution of his views on the future course of democratization in China. These views are presented in the context of the post-Cultural Revolution period marked by the death of Mao Zedong, followed by the Reform and Opening policy, and ending with the current presidential term of Xi Jinping. From the point of view of a historical document, the Link and Wu account is entirely consistent with Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, et al.’s Journey of Liu Xiaobo: From Dark Horse to Nobel Laureate (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2020). This is the case, considering both works, especially in regard to Tiananmen in 1989 (June Fourth Incident) and Liu Xiaobo’s participation, before, during, and in the years after. The repression and crisis of June Fourth marked the watershed.
Three moments in time help us follow the course of each passage: the “dark horse” years (chapters 5–7); the transition, leading up to the June Fourth Incident and its aftermath (chapters 8–10); starting over and full maturity in the forging of a truly effective political opposition, and joining the ranks of the government’s public enemy number one: Charter 08 (chapters 11–20).
Liu’s critical assessments of the democracy movement leadership during the second and third moments, and especially those that also involved a deep self-criticism, are the most revealing. Some of these assessments sparked bitter reactions from comrades and friends. Given the highest of moral standing that victims of June Fourth retain to this day—nationally and internationally—the leadership debate resulted in reproach and isolation. Liu’s having been fully cognizant of this predicable outcome makes the critical reflections all the more compelling. A detailed accounting and evaluation of the events, and of the broader opposition strategy, need to be deferred; but looking back on this contribution to the discussion, it is one that needs to pick up where it left off.
The writings and interviews of Liu’s dark horse years, in hindsight, often lack precision (putting it mildly, in some notable cases). Tao Li, Liu’s first wife, observed: “The system takes you as an opponent … accommodates you, even flatters and encourages you … In a sense you are its oppositional ornament…not…fundamentally incompatible with it” (148). Liu came to agree with the observation, quoting his first wife’s words. Later, in 2005: “Looking back…I realize that my entire youth was spent in a cultural desert…[that the] Cultural Revolution-style language had become ingrained in me” (162).
One might have thought that Liu’s sharp criticism of the June Fourth student leadership and (in appearance) less confrontational stance would have been welcomed by the Party. But Tao Li was right: that while the early provocations of rhetoric garnered wide acclaim from his generation, it was the lucid coherence of purpose of the third moment, post-Tiananmen, that represented the real danger.
A program of reform, with the implicit objective of winning over a decisive minority layer of the Party even from within its leading bodies, accepts the probability of a long-term perspective of change in favour of a greater opening in the system. A careful reading of Charter 08, which aimed to end one-party rule, and all of Liu’s proposals during the years of repeated imprisonment (from Tiananmen, 13 of the 28 years remaining to him), projects an incremental optimism that builds on “tentative progress” (341) that will be “lengthy” and “complex” (388), reflected in the 2012 title, No Enemies.
From this point of view, Liu perceived the demise of specifically Maoist tyranny in 1976—unrelenting since the early 1950s—as a turning point, betrayed and deficient as it turned out to be. He found the perverse sympathy for Maoism among prominent Western intellectuals to be particularly incomprehensible. Here, the references to May Fourth (1919) and the New Culture Movement of the 1920s, figure as an opportunity for the recovery of an exemplary historical antecedent. This view led Liu to reassess his previous dismissal of reform-minded tendencies within the ruling party system, represented by figures such as Zhao Ziyang, Hu Yaobang, and Liu Binyan (prior to expulsion and exile). The authors of this biography deserve credit for bringing this fundamental shift in Liu’s political thinking forward, if for no other reason than the responsibility to report the facts as they unfolded. The underlying reason is much more important.
The movement for Charter 08 was the culmination of this reassessment, shared now by an important layer of activists, a new political generation, that sought to draw lessons from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the liberation of Eastern Europe in the wake of Glasnost and Perestroika. To underscore a feature of the attempt to appeal to the broadest possible consensus, the framers of Charter 08 outlined a call for a renewed opening and reform. Notably, 30 years earlier, the anti-Soviet Charter 77 (the model for Charter 08) was signed by both non-members and members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. The other parallel consisted in pointing to the successful transitions to democracy in South Korea and Taiwan, especially the example “closer to home” across the strait. Central leaders of the reform came from within an enlightened faction of the ruling single party, the Kuomintang, in alliance with the independent opposition. In regard to the above-mentioned historical antecedent of the 1920s’ New Culture, it is not a coincidence that one of the leading figures of the earlier “Chinese Enlightenment” (93), Hu Shih, later played a role in the gradual (and eventually complete by all standards) democratization of Taiwan.
Interestingly, Liu Xiaobo was not a founding member nor participating author of the charter’s first draft, but became one of its most active promoters. The subsequent suggested edits reflected his vision of the widest possible acceptance with an emphasis on proposals that are formulated defensively, which is perhaps why he was singled out with what turned out to be the harshest punishment. Charter 08 may have, in fact, advanced the most effective reform program since 1949.
Norbert Francis
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff