Posted on 09/26/2005 2:48:56 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
BEIJING - A leading writer and political maverick from Taipei who ardently supports the unification of China and Taiwan - is confounding authorities in a rampaging lecture tour that ends Monday, by doing something no one here ever does: criticize the Communist Party in public.
In truth, Li Ao, a TV personality, leftist, and prolific author who was born in northern China, attacked the US, Japan, and nearly everything but the moon in rambling speeches that have embarrassed official China.
Mr. Li's broadsides chided the Party for a lack of intellectual freedom in China, told how the early Party allowed feisty debates, and included quotes from Mao about the Party one day ending - all broadcast live on Hong Kong's Phoenix TV, which reaches millions on the mainland.
Such events here are rare.
More broadly, experts say, the improbable Li event underscores how 'frigid the political climate in China has become.
As the government of Hu Jintao continues to consolidate its power in preparation for a key Party plenum next month, there is little room for the type of debate Li advocates.
If the negative official response is an indicator, Li's speeches were also a surprise. Leading professors have subtly attacked Li while not mentioning why. "He has lost his solemnity," says Wang Jun Chao of Tsinghua University.
Li's itinerary, interests, meetings, and views on the unity of Chinese culture are widely reported. But not his critical speeches.
Li speaks at Fudan University Monday in Shanghai after confirming to reporters that authorities asked him to eliminate political content from his talk. He refused to say if he would do so.
In the past year, a serious "strengthening ideology" campaign has taken place in China. Party officials are reportedly choosing actively among cadres about who will and who will not advance in coming years. It is a climate described by one prominent historian as one where, "nobody should 'rock the boat'."
"The new leadership's philosophy is still unclear, and until it is, no one is going to make a mistake by taking the wrong line on reform. There isn't room for any dissenting opinions right now," the historian adds.
Li's call for greater liberties coincided with the third arrest and heavy sentence this year for a Chinese journalist. Zheng Yichun, a freelancer, got seven years in prison last week for writing critically of the party in the magazine Epoch Times.
This summer a famous website for intellectuals was closed, one of few remaining. The site, the Beijing Institute of Economics and Sociology, stayed open during an ongoing crackdown due to prominent family backing. Yet the Hu government shut the site, after an article appeared by former Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou.
In the article, Mr. Ma, just named leader of the KMT party in Taipei, strongly backed the "One China" idea in which mainland China and the island of Taiwan would unify. Yet Ma also argued two changes were needed in China before Taiwan would agree to unify. These were 1) real laws protecting freedom of press and speech. 2) the right for unofficial groups to exist and operate freely, including currently outlawed groups like the Falun Gong spiritual sect.
Where was the 'red carpet'? Now, as the Li event gets attention in Beijing, it is being argued that neither Li nor his hosts seemed aware of the others' realities. Li, schooled in the rough and tumble world of Taipei media, filled his speech with sexual references, skipped around from ancient warlords and wisdom to Dwight Eisenhower, and he ridiculed Lian Chan, the former KMT leader whose historic visit last spring was prized by Beijing as a way to undercut Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. Standing at a dais studded with Beijing University's most prominent authorities, Li said he should have gotten the same "red carpet" treatment, as did President Clinton.
Indeed, rarely did Li allow his speeches to stray too far from himself, at one point saying: "There is nobody in history who has done more fighting for freedom of speech than Li Ao. I have written more than 100 books, 96 of which are banned.
Nobody in the world has written that many banned books... What does that prove? If I go to jail, I go to jail."
In Beijing, such words are incendiary. Public speech here is as painstakingly polite and deferential as it is controlled. No one talks openly, let alone on sensitive topics such as freedom of speech, or going to jail.
"[Beijing] didn't realize this is just a very critical person who just wants to criticize what it is that seems to be going wrong," says one European china expert. "Beijing officials are surprised by anything that is not zero sum.... Here, if you are against Taiwan succession, and for unification, you must be for Beijing. But the logic is more complex than this."
Li's university tour on the mainland was reportedly set up by Phoenix TV, whose owner Liu Changle last week told the Washington Post that greater openness and democracy would one day arrive in China, though gradually, and not in a Western form.
Colorful figure Western cable news channels Sunday carrying commentary on Li talk were blacked out; no mention of Li's critique has appeared in state-run media.
Li is a colorful figure in Taiwan. He is from Harbin, born, as he likes to say, "the same year as Elvis Presley." He lived under Japanese occupation, moved to Beijing, then to Taipei at age 14. He was a self-made academic, focusing on Chinese civilization, and lives what he calls a "very liberal" lifestyle. He regularly attacked the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and was twice thrown in jail.
"He's a unique personality on the Taiwan scene, pouring scorn on all parties, though fundamentally a unificationist," says Julian Baum, formerly with the Far East Economic Review, in Taipei. "He has a library of Chinese political history in his head."
As always, the Chinese political world is full of paradox: Last Saturday China's most prominent rock star, Cui Jin, was allowed to play an authentic concert in Beijing for the first time in a decade.
The move is part of China's ongoing efforts to police the country's 100-million Internet population. Only the United States, with 135 million users, has more.
The new rules take effect immediately and will "standardize the management of news and information" in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said today.
Sites should only post news on current events and politics, according to the new regulations issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and China's cabinet, the State Council. The subjects that would be acceptable under those categories was not clear.
Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, Xinhua said.
"The sites are prohibited from spreading news and information that goes against state security and public interest," it added.
While the communist government encourages Internet use for education and business, it also blocks material it deems subversive or pornographic. Online dissidents who post items critical of the government, or those expressing opinions in chatrooms, are regularly arrested and charged under vaguely worded state security laws................***
Interesting, informative. Thanks for posting.
You're welcome.
Is Li really an independent thinker, or is he just playing around with what in China are considered radical politics like a Western college professor might?
Pity. We coulda had the Viking Pandas.
Zhot
Leni
Hard to tell.
Did he play the commie game until he was somebody and now is letting them have it?
Bump!
Here is a link to his speeches in English, alas somewhat poorly translated.
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20050924_1.htm
Thank you.
We compare the difference between the Communists and America and we see open dissent and outright sedition on American television by protesters, whereas in China we see the suppression of dissent.
When we look closer at the goals of the American Left, we discover that they share China's view on dissent, where only those who agree can speak in a public forum.
American conservatives adhere to the idea that dissenters must be allowed to voice their dissent, regardless of how much we disagree with what they say. It is ultimately up to the voters to decide who is right.
The media plays a large role in the dissemination of the information, and here in the U.S. our media has joined forces with the Left, but market forces have driven the creation of alternative media sources.
The Left seeks to create a system that silences dissent. The Right preserves the Left's right to dissent.
Li is ... I don't know, wouldn't call him a leftist per se. He is a gadfly and a polemic on the Taiwan political scene. He's one of those intellectual types that tend to piss on authorities whoever they may be.
If you read his writing (all in Chinese though, but he is a prolific writer going back 40 + years), his politics is definitely liberal, but he has always been an ardent anti-communist, or maybe more broadly, anti-authoritarian in general. Which is what got him in trouble and jail multiple times during the Nationalist (KMT) martial law rule on Taiwan in the 60's and 70's for criticizing the KMT government. In fact he was sitting in jail with many of the Taiwan independence movement founders who were also in jail in Taiwan under KMT rule at the time.
Now they are all out of jail after Taiwan ended martial law and KMT's one party authoritarian rule in the late 80's - the previously jailed Taiwan Independence people are now the ruling party in Taiwan (DPP) and Li is ... now loudly criticzing his formal jailmates for their Taiwan independence idealogy. For Li is also very much a Chinese nationalist that's dead set against Taiwan independence.
So, as I said, he pretty muched pissed on every government in both Taiwan and China over the last 40 years.
Thank you for the information.
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