No Enemies, No Hatred

by Liu Xiaobo

  15. Financial and Tax Reform. We should establish a democratically regulated and accountable system of public finance that ensures the protection of taxpayer rights and that operates through legal procedures. We need a system by which public revenues that belong to a certain level of government—central, provincial, county, or local—are controlled at that level. We need major tax reform that will abolish any unfair taxes, simplify the tax system, and spread the tax burden fairly. Government officials should not be able to raise taxes, or institute new ones, without public deliberation and the approval of a democratic assembly. We should reform the ownership system in order to encourage competition among a wider variety of market participants.

  16. Social Security. We should establish a fair and adequate social security system that covers all citizens and ensures basic access to education, health care, retirement security, and employment.

  17. Protection of the Environment. We need to protect the natural environment and to promote development in a way that is sustainable and responsible to our descendants and to the rest of humanity. This means insisting that the state and its officials at all levels not only do what they must do to achieve these goals, but also accept the supervision and participation of nongovernmental organizations.

  18. A Federated Republic. A democratic China should seek to act as a responsible major power contributing toward peace and development in the Asian Pacific region by approaching others in a spirit of equality and fairness. In Hong Kong and Macao, we should support the freedoms that already exist. With respect to Taiwan, we should declare our commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and then, negotiating as equals and ready to compromise, seek a formula for peaceful unification. We should approach disputes in the national-minority areas of China with an open mind, seeking ways to find a workable framework within which all ethnic and religious groups can flourish. We should aim ultimately at a federation of democratic communities of China.

  19. Truth in Reconciliation. We should restore the reputations of all people, including their family members, who suffered political stigma in the political campaigns of the past or who have been labeled as criminals because of their thought, speech, or faith. The state should pay reparations to these people. All political prisoners and prisoners of conscience must be released. There should be a Truth Investigation Commission charged with finding the facts about past injustices and atrocities, determining responsibility for them, upholding justice, and, on these bases, seeking social reconciliation.

  China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the UN Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights. Unfortunately, we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization. This must change, truly it must. The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer.

  Accordingly, we dare to put civic spirit into practice by announcing Charter 08. We hope that our fellow citizens who feel a similar sense of crisis, responsibility, and mission, whether they are inside the government or not, and regardless of their social status, will set aside small differences to embrace the broad goals of this citizens’ movement. Together we can work for major changes in Chinese society and for the rapid establishment of a free, democratic, and constitutional country. We can bring to reality the goals and ideals that our people have incessantly been seeking for more than a hundred years, and can bring a brilliant new chapter to Chinese civilization.

  This translation by Perry Link originally appeared in the New York Review of Books, vol. 56, no. 1, January 15, 2009.

  Postscript: A Partial Chronology of the Immediate Aftermath of the Charter’s Appearance

  December 6, 2008 (three days before the Charter’s formal announcement): Police in Hangzhou, in eastern central China, detained Wen Kejian, a writer and primary drafter of the Charter, and questioned him for about an hour. They told Wen that Charter 08 was “different” from earlier dissident statements, and “a fairly grave matter.” They said there would be a coordinated investigation in all cities and provinces to “root out the organizers” and advised Wen to remove his name from the Charter. Wen declined, answering that he saw the Charter as possibly a turning point in Chinese history.

  December 8: Police in Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, called on Zhao Dagong, a drafter and signer of the Charter, for a “chat.” They told Zhao that the central authorities were concerned about the Charter and asked if he was the organizer in the Shenzhen area.

  December 8, at 11 p.m.: Police in Beijing came to the home of Liu Xiaobo, confiscated books, notes, and computers, detained Liu, and took him away.

  December 8, also 11 p.m.: About twenty police entered the Beijing home of Zhang Zuhua, one of the Charter’s main drafters. A few of them escorted Zhang to the local police station, where they held him for twelve hours, questioning him in detail about Charter 08 and Chinese Human Rights Defenders. The others remained in the apartment and, as Zhang’s wife watched, searched the home, confiscating books, notebooks, Zhang’s passport, all four of the family’s computers, and all of their cash and credit cards. (Zhang later learned that his family’s bank accounts, including those of both his and his wife’s parents, had been emptied.)

  December 9: Beijing police summoned a number of people who had signed the Charter, including the rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and the physicist and philosopher Jiang Qisheng, for “chats” aimed at extracting information about the organization of the Charter effort.

  December 10: Police in Hangzhou again came to the home of Wen Kejian, and this time were more threatening. They told Wen he would face severe punishment if he wrote about the Charter or about Liu Xiaobo’s detention. “Do you want three years in prison?” they asked. “Or four?”

  December 11: Beijing police interrogated the journalist Gao Yu and the Internet writer Liu Di (“the stainless steel mouse”) about their signing of the Charter. Police also visited the rights lawyer Teng Biao, but Teng declined on principle to speak with them.

  December 12 and 13: There were reports of interrogations in many provinces—Shanxi, Hunan, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, and others—of people who had seen the Charter on the Internet, found that they agreed with it, and signed. With these people the police focused on two questions: “How did you get involved?” and “What do you know about the drafters and organizers?”

  December 10–14: Chinese living outside China signed a letter of strong support for the Charter. The eminent historian Yu Ying-shih, the astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, writers Ha Jin and Zheng Yi, and more than 160 others were original signatories.

  December 12: The Dalai Lama published a letter of support for the Charter, writing that “a harmonious society can come into being only when there is trust among the people, freedom from fear, freedom of expression, rule of law, justice, and equality” and calling on the Chinese government to release prisoners “who have been detained for exercising their freedom of expression.”

  —Perry Link, December 18, 2008

  MY SELF-DEFENSE

  At his trial on December 23, 2009, Liu Xiaobo presented the following written response to the government’s charges that he was guilty of “inciting subversion of state power.” The six articles that Liu refers to in the first paragraph include “To Change a Regime by Changing a Society” (pp. 21–29 above) and “A Deeper Look into Why Child Slavery in China’s ‘Black Kilns’ Could Happen” (pp. 94–106). The other four were “The Authoritarian Patriotism of the Communist Party of China” (Epoch Times, October 4, 2005); “Who Says the Chinese People Deserve Only ‘Democracy by Party Rule’?” (Observe China, January 6, 2006); “The Many Faces of Communist Party Dictatorship” (Observe China, March 13, 2006); and “How a Rising
Dictatorship Hurts Democracy in the World” (the BBC Chinese website, May 3, 2006).—Ed.

  CRIMINAL INDICTMENT Number 247 of Branch One of the Beijing Prosecutor’s Office for the year 2009 lists six of my articles plus Charter 08, quotes about 330 characters from them, and uses these quotations as its bases to charge that criminal responsibility should be determined for my having violated the stipulations of Article 105, Section 2, of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China regarding “incitement of subversion of state power.”

  The statements in the Indictment that follow the phrase “after [he] solicited more than 300 signatures” contain some factual inaccuracies. Other than that, I have no objection to the factual statements that are made. The six articles indeed are mine, and I did contribute to Charter 08. I was, however, able to collect only about 70 signatures for it (not “more than 300,” as the Indictment says). The other signatures were not collected by me.

  I cannot accept the claim that I have broken the law. Throughout the time of my detention, slightly more than a year, I have consistently maintained my innocence before every police interrogator, prosecutor, and judge whom I have met. Now, basing myself on China’s constitution, on human rights conventions of the United Nations, on my ideals for political reform, and on the trends of world history, I am once again presenting a claim of “not guilty.”

  1. One of the more important fruits of “reform and opening” has been the steadily rising awareness of human rights among our fellow Chinese and the sporadic but increasing incidents in which their demands for rights have pressed the government to progress in its own thinking on this topic. In 2004 the National People’s Congress, in amending China’s constitution to include the phrase “the state respects and guarantees human rights,” made this guarantee a constitutional principle for the governance of our country by rule of law. The human rights that the government is now bound to respect and guarantee are the various rights of citizens that are listed under Article 35 of China’s constitution. Freedom of speech is one of those fundamental rights. Because my expression of dissenting political opinion is an exercise by a Chinese citizen of rights to freedom of expression granted by the Chinese constitution, the Chinese government is therefore not only bound not to limit or to arbitrarily remove the right; it is bound, on the contrary, to respect and guarantee it. It is not my words but those of the Indictment that infringe upon China’s most fundamental law. They are an excellent example of treating words as crimes, which itself is an extension into the present day of China’s antique practice called “literary inquisition.” This practice deserves our moral censure in addition to prosecution for violation of the constitution. Article 105, Section 2, of the Criminal Law itself seems clearly to violate the constitution and should be referred to the National People’s Congress for a review of its constitutionality.

  2. The Indictment quotes a few paragraphs from my articles as its basis to charge that I have used “rumor-mongering and slander to incite subversion of state power and overthrow of the socialist system.” The charges are specious. “Rumor-mongering” means to invent or fabricate falsities that harm the interests of others. “Slander” means to use invented material to sully a person’s reputation. Both charges depend on the question of truth and falsity and on the question of harming of others or not—either their reputations or their interests. All of my articles, however, fall into the category of commentary; they express my thinking, viewpoints, and value judgments. They are not judgments of fact, and none has harmed the interests of any person. They do not come near to either “rumor-mongering” or “slander.” Criticism is not rumor-mongering, and opposition is not slander.

  3. Citing a few excerpts from Charter 08, the Indictment charges that I have slandered the ruling party and “have plotted to incite subversion of the current government.” The selection of excerpts in the Indictment has been made with a view to serving the preconceived goals of the prosecutors. It completely ignores the basic position of Charter 08 and the overall viewpoint that my articles consistently express. Let me illustrate.

  The “human rights disasters” to which Charter 08 refers are all facts of recent Chinese history. The Anti-Rightist Campaign wrongly labeled more than 500,000 people as “rightists.” The Great Leap Forward led to more than ten million unnatural deaths. The Cultural Revolution produced a national calamity. The June Fourth [Tiananmen] Massacre brought death to many and prison terms to many more. All of these facts are well-known “human rights disasters” that have been recognized for bringing crises to China—thereby, as Charter 08 says, not only “constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization.” What Charter 08 says about abolishing one-party rule is simply a call upon the ruling party to carry out reforms that will return power to the people so that we might establish a free nation “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

  Charter 08 avows certain values and advocates certain structures that are aimed at building a free and democratic federated republic in the long term. It lists nineteen specific reform measures and recommends that they be pursued gradually and peacefully. The purposes of these measures are to correct the many abuses in China’s current system of crippled reforms and to press the ruling party to convert its program of crippled reforms into a healthier model in which political and economic reforms move forward in tandem. At another level the Charter’s aim is to bring popular pressure to bear on officialdom to return power to the people as soon as possible. Popular pressure from below can induce political reforms from above and lead to a healthful symbiosis between people and officials that can bring us nearer than ever to the dream of constitutional government that our countrymen have been cherishing now for about a hundred years.

  Over the past two decades, from 1989 to 2009, I have consistently held that China’s political reform should be gradual, peaceful, orderly, and under control. I have always opposed the notion of sudden radical leaps, and have opposed violent revolution even more stoutly. My preference for a gradual approach to reform is set forth in my essay “To Change a Regime by Changing a Society” [pp. 21–29] where I make it clear that I look to things such as the spread of rights consciousness in society, increased numbers of rights-advocacy projects, greater autonomy at the popular level, and the gradual expansion of civil society as ways to build pressure from below and eventually to compel officialdom to make reforms. This pattern is what in fact has been happening during the last thirty years of reform in China in any case: the record shows that every one of the changes that has made a significant difference in our system was, in its earliest inception, something that began spontaneously among the people. Only after the popular innovations achieved a certain identity and influence did authorities adopt them and turn them into top-down policies.

  In sum, my keywords for China’s political reform are gradual, peaceful, orderly, and controllable, and I favor a symbiosis of bottom-up and top-down efforts. I hold this view because I see it as having the greatest benefits at the lowest costs. I am aware, as are most people, that orderly and controllable social change is always superior to disorderly and uncontrollable change and that order under a bad government is still better than chaos under no government at all. From this it should be clear that my opposition to dictatorial government and power monopoly is not the same as “inciting subversion of the current government.” Opposition is not the same as subversion.

  4. An ancient Chinese proverb says “The arrogant lose while the modest gain,” and a similar maxim from the West says “Pride comes before a fall.” I am aware of my own limits, and know that my public statements cannot have been perfect. Especially in my commentaries on current events, I have sometimes fallen into slipshod argument, excessive emotion, factual error, and sweeping conclusion. But none of these errors has anything to do with crime, and cannot be valid evidence in a criminal trial. This is because the right to free speech includes not just the right to say correct things but also the right to say inc
orrect things. Correct statements and majority views must be protected, but incorrect statements and minority views need equal protection. The familiar statement from the modern West that “I may disagree with your view but insist on protecting your right to express it in public, even if it is incorrect” captures the essence of free speech. China’s ancient traditions contain the same wisdom, for example in the famous “24-character ditty” that says, “Say all you know, in every detail; a speaker is blameless, because listeners can think; if the words are true, make your corrections; if they are not, just take note.” How is it that this ditty could be passed down through the ages in China, staying alive on the tongues and in the ears of so many people? This happened because the words capture the essential meaning of free speech. In my view the line “a speaker is blameless, because listeners can think” could well serve as watchword for anyone who listens to criticisms of him- or herself. All the more should the ruling authority heed it when dealing with political dissidence.

  5. Another reason I cannot be judged guilty is that the charges against me are in violation of human rights agreements of the international community. As early as 1948, China, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, participated in drafting the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Fifty years later, in 1997 and 1998, the Chinese government again undertook solemn understandings with the international community by signing two agreements on human rights that had been drafted at the United Nations [the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, signed in 1997 and ratified in 2001; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed in 1998 but not yet ratified—Ed.]. One of these, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, lists freedom of speech among the most fundamental of universal human rights and calls upon every member state to respect and guarantee it. As a member of the UN Human Rights Council, and as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China should feel a duty not only to honor its own commitments to UN human rights covenants but, beyond that, to be a model for others in showing how rights should be guaranteed. This is the way, indeed the only way, in which the Chinese government can assure the human rights of its own citizens as well as make its contribution, as a great nation should, to the project of advancing human rights globally.