The paranoia behind China’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo

For the regime, it was safer to turn him into a martyr than allow his ideas to spread 
By Jamil Anderlini

Liu Xiaobo, the great Chinese public intellectual and Nobel laureate died last week while serving an 11-year sentence for peacefully disagreeing with one-party rule in his country.
His death last week was a farcical spectacle of cruelty. 
His liver cancer was not discovered or acknowledged by his captors until he had just weeks to live, his medical treatment was little more than a fig leaf and his dying wish to leave China was rejected.
The government arranged a hasty burial at sea so that his grave could never serve as a shrine to the country’s most famous dissident, and his brother was paraded before the media to thank the Communist party and the government for his mistreatment. 
Given its roots as a revolutionary movement, the party understands very well the power of charismatic martyrs like Liu, which is why it takes him and his message so seriously.
Already pervasive levels of state censorship have reached new heights in the past week and the government has lashed out angrily at western media for their coverage of Liu and his untimely death. Beijing’s public argument boils down to this: Liu was convicted in a Chinese court so he is a common criminal, awarding him a Nobel Prize was a “blasphemy” and none of this is the business of anyone outside China.
The real rationale, expressed by some officials in private, is this: People like Liu, with their non-violent idealism, calls for individual freedom and willingness to die for their beliefs, pose a potent threat to one-party rule. 
The current Chinese leadership have read Alexis de Tocqueville’s The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution and also closely studied the periods leading up to the 1917 Russian Revolution, the 1911 Chinese revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Their conclusion is that authoritarian systems are at their most vulnerable when they attempt to liberalise. 
The Chinese Communist party must therefore avoid this at all costs.
Since gradual political reform is off the agenda, individuals like Liu must be ruthlessly suppressed lest their spark sets off the prairie fire that could threaten the stability of Chinese society as a whole. 
The fact that Liu earned his stripes as a dissident during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations and subsequent massacre makes his case so much more significant.
China’s leadership argues, and many ordinary people believe, that the country’s economic success since then would not have been possible had the party not unleashed the People’s Liberation Army on unarmed demonstrators.
Government officials and Communist party cadres think it was a necessary evil.
They believe that the political chaos that could result from a fresh popular push for democracy would result in misery for hundreds of millions.
Compared with that, they ask, what is the suffering of one stubborn individual?
To understand the ruthless authoritarian paranoia behind Beijing’s treatment of Liu is not to excuse it.
This is how Liu himself put it in 2006: “Although the regime of the post-Mao era is still a dictatorship, it is no longer fanatical but rather a rational dictatorship that has become increasingly adept at calculating its interests.”
In calculating those interests, the regime has decided that it was safer to turn Liu into a martyr than to allow his ideas to spread unchallenged. 
This conclusion is probably correct in the short term.
Thanks to the party’s efforts, the vast majority of Chinese people have never heard of Liu and most of those who have heard of him think he was a hopeless troublemaker. 
His death will not spark a revolution.
But I wonder if the party’s calculation will prove correct over the longer term.
By explicitly rejecting gradual top-down democratisation, it is increasing the likelihood of an eventual bottom-up rejection of authoritarian rule. 
If and when that day comes, the demonstrators will no doubt carry banners featuring Liu’s smiling face and emblazoned with the words he wrote but was forbidden to read at his trial on Christmas Day in 2009: “There is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom, and China will in the end become a nation ruled by law, where human rights reign supreme.”

China is helping redevelop what was once the US’s largest overseas military base

By Therese Reyes

Holding down the fort. 

Clark Freeport Zone, Philippines
It has been 26 years since the US military, prodded by a volcanic eruption, left Clark Air Base in the Philippines. 

But signs of its stay, which lasted over eight decades, remain. 

The site follows city planning established by Americans, complete with barn-style houses lining some roads. 

Still present are old barracks, the parade grounds, and a veterans’ cemetery for US and Filipino soldiers and their families.Old military barn houses. 

“A lot has changed, but the basics are there,” said Noel Flores, a 47-year-old local lawyer. 

“If you’ve been to areas in California or particularly in New Jersey, the atmosphere is quite similar.”
But looks can be deceiving. 

While Clark was once the largest overseas American base, today the site is being transformed into a new business district that will one day rival Manila. 

And it’s China, not the US, whose presence is increasingly felt in the area.
Last October, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte surprised many by announcing his “separation” from the US while he “aligned” with China. 

Beijing, for its part, pledged to invest heavily in badly needed infrastructure improvements in the Philippines—including ones that will help transform Clark and its surrounds.
Given the base’s once key role in the US projecting power in Southeast Asia, China’s hand in its transformation is a sharp reminder of Beijing’s growing influence in the Philippines and beyond.

New friends
Not everyone was surprised by Duterte’s October 2016 announcement, which he delivered while on a state visit to Beijing. 

To political analyst Ramon Casiple, the move was about normalizing relations not just with China, but with the US as well.
“It is not to break relations with the US, but to put [Duterte], the administration, and the country in a position that has leverage against both,” Casiple said. 

In his mind, the US went from having a “preferential” relationship with the Philippines to a normal one “on the same level as China.”
Another reason for Duterte’s embrace of China is his desire to decentralize power away from Manila. To do so, he’ll need to vastly improve—with financial help from the outside—the infrastructure of other parts of the nation. 

Clark is one of the more promising places to do that, thanks to its size, location, and the infrastructure previously installed by the US. (Japan, ever wary of China’s moves, is also getting involved, offering to fund a railway link between the airports in Clark and Manila.)

Pampanga province. 

During its heyday, Clark Air Base had a population of 15,000 and encompassed about 600 sq km (230 sq miles) of land, including a military reservation.
Today the site, located about 80 km (50 miles) northwest of Manila in the provinces of Pampanga and Tarlac, is home to the Clark Freeport Zone. 

With tax-free importing and other incentives, the zone lures companies from a wide variety of industries. 

They in turn employ tens of thousands of local residents from the surrounding areas.
But bigger plans are afoot for the former base. 

An urban development called New Clark City, estimated to be completed by 2021, will be located next to the freeport zone, and offer the same financial breaks. 

While such plans have been hindered in the past by politics and business rivalries, Duterte is pushing them forward.

China steps in
When he returned from Beijing last year, Duterte brought with him $24 billion worth of investments and pledges. 

According to the Philippines trade ministry, at least three projects relate to developments in Clark, including an industrial park in New Clark City (sometimes called Clark Green City) and a cargo rail link between Clark and Subic Bay. 

The latter is also a freeport zone and home to a former US naval base. 

Another project calls for China’s Huawei to build tech infrastructure in the area.
Such investments are in line with China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, which aims to link China (and its products) to countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe via new infrastructure projects, especially transportation-related ones.
Clark’s central location in Asia, its proximity to Manila, and its onsite international airport mean China won’t have to wait long to reap the benefits of helping the Philippines. 

In a few years its businesses will be able to take full advantage of the incentives on offer.
The projects will also benefit the Philippines, though the deals may not be as good as they seem. Some question the credibility of the Chinese investors. 

Such projects could make the Philippines heavily indebted to China, which in turn could weaken its ability to stand up to Beijing in the contested South China Sea. (It was the US military’s withdrawal from the Philippines, mainly Clark and Subic, that opened the way for China’s territorial aggression in that vital waterway.)

A welcome change
While China’s growing influence worries some, many area residents welcome the new developments at Clark. 

“There will be more tourists coming here, more job opportunities,” said Mark Felker, a 24-year-old working as a museum tour guide at the former base.
After the Americans left in 1991, Clark’s freeport status allowed it to transition into a destination for cheap imported goods. 

At one point, there were at least 10 duty-free shops at the former base, but by the mid-2000s, many had closed down.An upcoming business incubator in Clark.

The main concern for locals isn’t China, but something more pedestrian: the lack of public transportation in Clark. 

Because the zone operates independently from local governments, the jeepneys and motorized tricycles commonly used to get around in the Philippines are not allowed inside. 

A train system would benefit workers in Clark, Felker said, especially those working graveyards shifts in call centers. 

According to the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, charged with developing the former US base, the New Clark City project will include a train system that will also help ease traffic in the surrounding areas.
Clark today is a work in progress. 

New buildings for business incubators and call centers are cropping up near abandoned strip malls. 

A sprawling compound that once housed a hotel, villas, and a casino is now under new management and undergoing an overhaul. 

Roads are being widened and bridges reconstructed, slowing down traffic.
For Flores, all that’s left to do is wait for the promised improvements. 

“I would really have to trust that the officials administering the zone know what they’re doing and that they have it in their heart to look after the greater interests of the future generations.”

An unbreakable bond
Meanwhile, even as China’s presence grows, the ties between the US and the Philippines remain strong.
The Clark Museum, a modest building with three floors of galleries about Clark’s history, has a wing dedicated to its days as a US air base. 

Memorabilia like uniforms and dinnerware (donated by the families of veterans) are displayed in large wooden cabinets, making them look even more like personal heirlooms. 

Many of the museum’s visitors are Filipino-Americans.
Felker, who works at the museum, hails from nearby Angeles City and knows about Clark’s history only from books and anecdotes passed on by his family. 

But like many from the surrounding area, he has an affinity for the place. 

“I was a product of this base because my grandfather was an American,” he said.The Clark veterans cemetery, with renovations in the distance. 

The connection between the Philippines and the US is a difficult one to break because it is ingrained in policies, culture, and, in cases like Felker’s, family. 

The latest US census report shows that Filipinos are the second-largest Asian group in the US. 

And in the Philippines, there are as many as 250,000 people who are part American.
Political links also run deep. 

Thanks in large part to a mutual defense treaty signed in 1951, the US is now assisting the Philippine military in its effort to reestablish control of Marawi, a city on the southern island of Mindanao that was overtaken in late May by terrorists linked to ISIL. 

Such assistance comes despite Duterte’s proclaimed “separation” from the US.
“Filipinos are America’s No. 1 fan club,” Casiple said. 

“Our relation with the US is too deep historically. It’s beyond Duterte.”

China's ocean burial of Liu Xiaobo backfires as activists stage sea protests

Beijing’s aim of denying the dissident’s supporters a focal point is thwarted by protests from the Chinese coast to the Atlantic
By Tom Phillips in Beijing and Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong

Zhou Fengsuo protests against the death of Liu Xiaobo in San Francisco. 

Beijing has inadvertently transformed two thirds of the world’s surface into a vast aquatic protest zone, activists have said, after the ashes of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo were cast into the sea in what friends believe was a bid to submerge his political ideas.
Supporters of the democracy campaigner, who died in custody last week, will hold a series of global memorials on Wednesday, the seventh day since his death and a highly symbolic day of mourning in Chinese tradition.
Many of those protests will be held beside – or in – the sea, an allusion to Liu’s controversial ocean burial which supporters saw as a deliberate attempt to deny them a place of pilgrimage.
“The Communist Party thinks because there is no tombstone we can not commemorate Liu Xiaobo, but in fact the whole sea has become a place where we can be close to him,” said Hu Jia, an activist and longtime friend.

An image used by campaigners to promote the memory of Liu Xiaobo. 

Wen Yunchao, a New York-based campaigner, said Beijing had hoped that by consigning Liu’s remains to the ocean it could drown his ideas. 

“But it backfired – now anyone can go to the sea and mourn.”
In the days since Liu’s death, activists say watery protests have already taken place around the world including in New York, Boston, Melbourne, London and Hong Kong.
“We are doing this to keep his memory alive,” said Zhou Fengsuo, a California-based campaigner and Tiananmen survivor who donned a pair of tartan swimming trunks and took a dip in the Pacific to protest China’s “senseless” treatment of his friend.
On Sunday mourners, including Wen Yunchao, lit candles and placed an empty chair symbolising Liu’s absence from the 2010 Nobel award ceremony on the shores of the Atlantic in Queens, New York.
The next day Liu’s biographer and friend, Yu Jie, waded out into the waters off Taiwan’s west coast carrying a sign that read: “Mourning Liu Xiaobo: a martyr of China’s democracy.”
There have even been attempts at seaside resistance in China’s authoritarian mainland.
Activists Jiang Jianjun and Wang Chenggang, traveled to Dalian’s Laohutan beach, near the site of Liu’s burial, and filmed themselves hurling a bottle into the sea with a message reading: “Rest in peace, Mr Liu Xiaobo”.
Jiang was subsequently detained by Chinese police. 

“He posted pictures online and he was arrested,” said Zhou.

“In China there is a very severe crackdown on anyone who dares to commemorate Liu Xiaobo’s life in public.”
Zhou, who is organising a second waterfront demonstration in San Francisco on Wednesday, said he had been surprised to see Liu’s admirers flock to shorelines around the world, without any apparent coordination.
“We didn’t even talk to each other,” he said. 

Many dissenters had found inspiration in a widely-shared portrait by dissident artist Badiucao which pictures Liu’s corpse staring out from a tsunami.
Beijing had deliberately denied Liu an onshore resting place in order to stop his grave becoming a “lightning rod” for anti-Communist party protests. 

Activists now had to fight back, using the sea as an offshore rallying ground: “The government not only destroyed his body physically but they want to erase him from the collective memory .... We have to [protest] with as much creativity as we can.”
“Liu Xiaobo loved the ocean. He loved swimming. To our generation – in the 80s – the ocean was a symbol of freedom and openness,” Zhou added. 

“So that is where we can feel a connection with him now.”

China's growing intolerance for dissent will come at a high price

By pushing the Hong Kong opposition out of the legislature and persecuting Liu Xiaobo, Beijing has set in motion a new era of resistance

By Jason Y Ng

People attend a candlelight march for the late Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo in Hong Kong. 

On Thursday evening, Chinese dissident and political prisoner Liu Xiaobo died from liver cancer in a Shenyang Hospital. 

Liu was, as the Western press sharply pointed out, the first Nobel Peace Prize laureate to die in custody since Carl von Ossietzky did in Nazi Germany in 1938. 

Supporters the world over mourned the death of a man who lived and died a hero. 

The only crime he ever committed was penning a proposal that maps out a bloodless path for his country to democratise.
Then on Friday afternoon, Beijing’s long arm stretched across the border and reached into Hong Kong’s courtroom. 

Bound by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee’s decision on oath-taking etiquettes, the Hong Kong High Court ruled to unseat four democratically-elected opposition lawmakers, including Nathan Law, the youngest person ever to be elected to the legislature. 

The only infraction the four ever committed was straying from their oaths during the swearing-in ceremony to voice their desire for their city to democratise.
The two news stories, less than 24 hours apart, share a chilling symmetry. 

They underscore the Chinese government’s growing intolerance for dissent on both the mainland and the territories it controls.
But Beijing’s tightening grip comes at a cost. 

In Hong Kong, Liu’s death has rekindled an anti-mainland sentiment that has been smouldering for years. 

To the seven million citizens who watched Liu’s slow death in equal parts horror and grief, any remaining pretence that modern China is a benevolent paternal state that has moved beyond a brutal response to political debate has been shattered once and for all. 

And all current and future attempts by Beijing to win over Hong Kong people, especially the younger generations, are doomed to fail. 

The indelible images of a skin-and-bone dissident on his deathbed or of that famous empty chair in the Oslo City Hall have been seared into their collective mind. 

China has lost Hong Kong forever.
Similarly, the removal of four pro-democracy lawmakers is not without consequence for Beijing. 

By reinterpreting the oath-taking provisions in the Basic Law, the Chinese government has sidestepped the judiciary in Hong Kong and dealt another blow to the city’s rule of law. 

Each time the NPCSC rewrites the rules and overrides local judges, Hong Kong’s independent judiciary—the bedrock of its economic success—means a bit less. 

With each heavy-handed attempt to squash the opposition, “one country, two systems”—the framework of happy coexistence for Hong Kong that Xi Jinping is fond of parading in front of world leaders and hopes that Taiwan will one day embrace—looks a little more like a broken promise.
What’s more, the loss of four pro-democracy seats has removed the checks and balances in Hong Kong’s bicameral legislature – the Legislative Council – which comprises the democratically-elected Geographical Constituencies and the undemocratic Functional Constituencies stacked with pro-business special interest lobbyists. 

The unseating of the foursome has cost the opposition its majority in the Geographical Constituencies, which means that any unwanted bill proposed by a pro-Beijing lawmaker will sail pass both houses.
One of the first things that the pro-Beijing camp plans on doing is amend the voting procedures in the legislature to put an end to filibusters. 

Without the ability to block that amendment, the opposition will see its only effective weapon against the government taken away. 

That means there will be nothing to stop the Hong Kong government from pushing through Beijing’s political agenda for Hong Kong, from the passing of a highly unpopular anti-subversion law to the approval of multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects for great economic integration with the mainland.
All that will work in Beijing’s favour in the short run, but the headache won’t be far behind. 

A legislature that acts with complete impunity will further embitter the population and destabilize Hong Kong. 

By pushing the opposition out of the legislature and back onto the streets, Beijing may have inadvertently set in motion a new era of resistance.
The same ingredients that ignited the Occupy Movement three years ago will once again bubble to the surface, pushing the city toward a political movement of a larger scale and with more far-reaching repercussions. 

None of that is in Xi’s interest, considering that the senior Chinese leadership is already mired in factional infighting and an increasingly ungovernable Hong Kong will hurt the strongman image that Xi has so carefully crafted for himself.
What separates a skilled autocrat from the rest of the mad dictators is his ability to judge the difference between going too far and just far enough. 

Control may be the Chinese Communist Party’s best substitute for legitimacy and a necessary condition for self-perpetuation, but how much control is too much continues to confound –and may one day trip up – Xi’s leadership. 

What happened to Liu Xiaobo and the four ousted lawmakers in Hong Kong suggests that Beijing is now dangerously close to overstepping that line. 

The price for misjudging the situation will be high, and while most of it will be borne by mainland dissidents and the citizens of Hong Kong, it may pack enough punch to upset the ever-delicate balance in the house of cards.

World's Stupidest President

Donald Trump helps make China great again.
By Richard North Patterson
Xi Jinping arrives in Berlin on July 4 to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

China’s global aspirations should be no surprise.

For centuries, it has seen itself as a civilization apart. 

Inevitably, Western encroachment bred an indelible resentment of nations which, in China’s view, had usurped its rightful place.
Animated by this sense of destiny thwarted, Xi Jinping means to restore Chinese dominance in Asia — exemplified by its construction of artificial islands as military bases in the South China Sea — the better to supplant America as the world’s leading geopolitical power. 

The hope that globalization would create a more benign and democratic China overlooked these deeper impulses.
They are hardly subtle. 

As the regime’s authoritarianism deepens, China undercuts democracy in Hong Kong, rebuilds its military, moves to control the future of Asia, and expands Chinese economic leverage around the globe.
Enter President Trump.
While Trump’s campaign rhetoric targeting China was simplistic, it played economic hardball — requiring American companies to transfer intellectual property in return for access to Chinese markets, acquiring American know-how while limiting our ability to do business. 

But on meeting Xi as president, Trump melted.
Xi’s lever was North Korea. 

Jettisoning all other concerns, Trump imagined that China, reversing established policy, would help divest its client of nuclear weapons. 

As China played him with hints and half measures, Trump mortgaged our overall China policy to a pipe dream based on nothing but his self-concept as a dealmaker.
Trump’s approach was transactional and narcissistic, reflecting the fatal convergence of ignorance and a short attention span. 

Abruptly, he tweeted that his feckless plan “has not worked out” but that “at least I know China tried!”
What China tried was to leave Trump without a viable plan for curtailing a nuclear program which, too soon, will imperil San Francisco.
Nettled, Trump sold arms to Taiwan, sanctioned two Chinese companies that finance North Korea, and dispatched ships for a drive-by in the South China Sea.
But spasms are not policy.
Trump has yet to grasp that China, like Russia, is our strategic adversary. 

This is the classic case of a rising power challenging a dominant one — economically, militarily, and ideologically — starting with Asia. 

That mandates a China policy that is comprehensive, farsighted, and clear.
Yet Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have not even assembled a team competent to formulate a vision that reflects American interests and values. 

Worse, Trump shuns the belief in free trade and democratic institutions, which cement our alliances with countries such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea, and provide an alternative to an economic order dominated by China.

Swiftly, China’s calculating regime castigated America for its selfishness and irresponsibility, cloaking its own economic self-interest in altruism. 

In Trump’s diplomatic vacuum, China — ironically, a principal consumer and exporter of coal power — is poised to become the world’s leader in advancing clean energy technology.
As Trump looks backward — trumpeting tariffs and promising to resurrect coal — China moves forward. 

As Trump shuns the European Union, China courts it. 

China is now Germany’s principal trading power, a leader in developing cutting-edge automobiles, the mobile Internet, and safer nuclear power. 

According to US News & World Report, China’s top engineering school has surpassed MIT. 

Despite setbacks, China is the world’s largest economy and its biggest export market.
A centerpiece of China’s geopolitical strategy is the “Belt and Road” initiative , an ambitious plan to finance and develop infrastructure and connectivity linking all of Asia to Europe and the Middle East — including an infrastructure bank intended to cement China’s economic leadership throughout the region. 

Its goal is to supplant the world’s existing economic order with one that serves Chinese prosperity and power.
This program, Xi asserts, embodies “economic globalization that is open, inclusive, balanced, and beneficial to all” — including antipoverty programs. 

In stark contrast, Trump grouses that “alliances have not always worked out very well for us,” signaling our economic and diplomatic retreat.
Whatever America’s faults, by tradition we espouse humane and democratic values. 

A Chinese-led world order would be morally impoverished. 

Yet, soon enough, China’s economic power may cause our traditional allies — in Asia and Europe — to turn away. 

Thus will Donald Trump help make China great again.

Kowtowing to China’s despots

Paying The Price Of Chinese Business ‘Partners’

Byy Larry M. Elkin

A portrait of Liu Xiaobo at the Nobel Peace Center in 2010. 

Two stories juxtaposed in the news late last week show just what it means to have China as a business “partner.”
First came word that famous dissident and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo died in a Chinese prison hospital, where he was suffering from liver cancer, at age 61. 

Both a German doctor and an American doctor recently examined Liu and pronounced him fit to travel abroad for treatment, which many Western governments urged China to allow. 

The Chinese government disputed the Western doctors’ findings, however, declaring Liu too ill to travel.
Beijing was never going to let Liu go, regardless of his state of health. 

His prompt death will surely be cited by his captors as evidence that they were right about his condition. 

Hardly anyone outside China will take such a claim at face value, when Liu’s death was so conveniently timed to remove a problem for the regime.
Liu had been in custody since late 2008 for his part in drafting Charter 08, a call for democratic, multi-party elections and the recognition of Chinese citizens’ human and civil rights. 

Not only did China refuse to let Liu accept his Nobel Prize in 2010, but the government did its utmost to ensure any Chinese invitee could not attend. 

It also threatened to retaliate against governments, including Norway, that it viewed as celebrating Liu’s recognition. 

Even before Charter 08, Liu had been an active voice for governmental reform since the Tiananmen protests of 1989. 

As The Wall Street Journal observed, Liu was the first Nobel Peace laureate to die in custody since 1938, when Carl von Ossietzky died in a prison hospital in Nazi Germany.
The second news item also appeared in The Wall Street Journal. 

The news outlet reported that Western companies face a major obstacle to introducing self-driving cars in China: The country won’t let them map its roads. 

Chinese mapping is done under licenses issued only to Chinese companies, 13 of them to date. 

Even Google Maps, ubiquitous in so much of the world, is restricted to use on desktop computers – not especially handy for turn-by-turn directions. 

These restrictions are in place for national security reasons, according to the government.
In contrast to the assertions about Liu’s medical condition, I am inclined to take this one at face value – just not in the way China presumably intends. 

Advanced weapons used by America and its allies have all the precise guidance they need; they don’t require Waze to find the places they need to go. 

On the other hand, if China’s citizens ever rise up against the country’s self-appointed and self-perpetuating ruling class, we can be sure that one of the government’s first counterrevolutionary steps will be to sharply restrict travel – and to turn off the mapping software that could guide everything from flash mobs to rogue soldiers driving tanks.
National security, indeed.
So, under the circumstances, will Western car companies walk away from the Chinese market? 

Not a chance. 

Robert Bosch GmbH, a German auto supplier, has already announced a partnership with Chinese mapping firms, according to the Journal. 

South Korea’s Hyundai Motors has also said it will work with one of China’s licensed mappers, and GM may not be far behind. 

Volvo may likewise follow, although that prominent brand with Swedish roots is now owned by a Chinese conglomerate. 

If history is any indication, few in the autonomous car industry will walk away from the huge consumer market that China represents, regardless of the draconian restrictions involved.
Like virtually every other Western industry – other than defense – over the past three decades, the makers of self-driving cars will kowtow to China’s rulers and take whatever crumbs happen to drop off the country’s economic banquet table. 

The shame this choice entails will only be briefly highlighted by the death in captivity of the fearless Nobel Prize laureate who devoted his entire adult life to the liberation of his nation, currently held captive by itself.

Liu Xiaobo: A Voice of Freedom

By JAMES A. DORN

The death of Liu Xiaobo from liver cancer on July 13, under guard at a hospital in Shenyang, marks the passing of a great defender of freedom—a man who was willing to speak truth to power. 

As the lead signatory to Charter 08, which called for the rule of law and constitutional government, Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “inciting the subversion of state power.” 

Before his sentencing in 2009, Liu stood before the court and declared, “To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity, and to suppress the truth.” 

With proper treatment and freedom, Liu would have lived on to voice his support for a free society.
While Liu’s advocacy of limited government, democracy, and a free market for ideas won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, China’s leadership viewed him as a criminal and refused to allow him to travel to Oslo to receive the award. 

Instead, the prize was placed on an empty chair at the ceremony, a lasting symbol of Liu’s courage in the face of state suppression. 

Beijing also prevented liberal Mao Yushi, cofounder of the Unirule Institute, from attending the ceremony to honor Liu.

The mistreatment of Liu, and other human rights’ proponents, is a stark reminder that while the Middle Kingdom has made significant progress in liberalizing its economy, it has yet to liberate the minds of the Chinese people or its own political institutions.
The tension between freedom and state power threatens China’s future. 

As former premier Wen Jiabao warned in a speech in August 2010, “Without the safeguard of political reform, the fruits of economic reform would be lost.” 

Later, in an interview with CNN in October, he held that “freedom of speech is indispensable for any country.”
Article 33, Section 3, of the PRC’s Constitution holds that “the State respects and protects human rights.” Such language, added by the National People’s Congress in 2004, encouraged liberals to test the waters, only to find that the reality did not match the rhetoric.
The Chinese Communist Party pays lip service to a free market in ideas, noting: “There can never be an end to the need for the emancipation of individual thought” (China Daily, November 16, 2013). 

However, Party doctrine strictly regulates that market. 

Consequently, under “market socialism with Chinese characteristics,” there is bound to be an ever-present tension between the individual and the state.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (September 22, 2015), Xi Jinping argued that “freedom is the purpose of order, and order the guarantee of freedom.” 

The real meaning of that statement is that China’s ruling elite will not tolerate dissent: individuals will be free to communicate ideas, but only those consistent with the state’s current interpretation of “socialist principles.”
This socialist vision contrasts sharply with that of market liberalism, which holds that freedom is not the purpose of order; it is the essential means to an emergent or spontaneous order. 

In the terms of traditional Chinese Taoism, freedom is the source of order. 

Simply put, voluntary exchange based on the principle of freedom or nonintervention, which Lao Tzu called “wu wei,” expands the range of choices open to individuals.
Denying China’s 1.4 billion people a free market in ideas has led to one of the lowest rankings in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters without Borders. 

In the 2016 report, China ranked 176 out of 180 countries, only a few notches above North Korea—and the situation appears to be getting worse. 

Under Xi Jinping’s consolidation of power in preparation for this year’s Party Congress, the websites of liberal think tanks, such as the Unirule Institute, have been shut down, and virtual private networks (VPNs) are being closed, preventing internet users from circumventing the Great Firewall.
Liu’s death is a tragic reminder that China is still an authoritarian regime whose leaders seek to hold onto power at the cost of the lives of those like Liu who seek only peace and harmony through limiting the power of government and safeguarding individual rights.