Zhang Zuhua, among the signatories of Charter 08, has declared that: “The award honors the more than 10,000 Chinese citizens who courageously signed in support of the ideas expressed in the Charter 08 and of all prisoners of conscience.” For his part, the chairman of the Committee that awards the Nobel Prize, Thorbjoern Jagland, said that Liu “is the most prominent symbol of the broad struggle for human rights in China.” The courage of the Nobel Committee in indicating Liu Xiaobo as the winner of the prestigious prize is, however, surprising. Particularly given that it comes at a time when the international community seems to be prostrating itself before China; super-rich, super-powerful, the largest market in the world, etc.
The point is that Liu Xiaobo’s and Charter 08’s vision of their country is prophetic: without human rights, China may be able to “modernize” itself from the economic point of view, but this modernization will become “madness,” the harbinger of a disaster, the traces of which are already visible in China today. Charter 08 cites some examples of this; “government corruption, the lack of rule of law, human rights undermined, the corruption of public ethics, crass capitalism, the growing inequality between rich and poor, unbridled exploitation of the natural environment, both human and historical; the escalation of a long list of social conflicts, and … a clear animosity between officials and ordinary people.” By curbing human rights and democracy, the Communist Party of China becomes fully responsible for the human disaster towards which China is heading.
An important element in giving the Nobel Prize to Liu lies in the fact that Charter 08 sees religious freedom as being at the heart of all true reform. It is increasingly clear that one cannot defend man (Chinese or of any other culture) without considering him an absolute value and, thus, in a religious view that sees man as belonging to God and not to the state. For this very reason – and perhaps for the first time in the history of Chinese dissidents – a document on human rights calls for religious freedom, the elimination of differences in “legal” and “illegal,” official and underground religious activities. This step – a religious foundation of human rights – is the result of the suffering and imprisonment of several dissidents, among them Liu, who came in contact with the best of Western civilization.
The Nobel Prize and the religious emphasis of Charter 08 and Liu Xiaobo’s proposals are also a warning to the West. Europe and the United States must choose whether to continue to use China like a donkey to pull us out of economic crisis, without considering the rights of workers and the environment, taking advantage of cheap labor and nothing more, or whether to enhance not only commercial and economic relations, but also human and religious rights, essential to the development of all peoples.
Liu’s warning and that of Charter 08 is that if this step towards respect for man and his religious dimension is not taken, China (and its economic super-development) is doomed to fail. And with it, the West would fail too.
