Senior Chinese dissident criticizes Liu Nobel

(AFP)

8 October 2010,

WASHINGTON — A senior figure in China’s democracy movement said Friday that
others deserved the Nobel Peace Prize more than Liu Xiaobo, calling him a mode
rate willing to work with Beijing.

The Nobel committee gave the prestigious prize to Liu, a writer and academic w
ho was jailed in December 2009 after co-writing a manifesto for democratic ref
orms in China.

Wei Jingsheng, who spent nearly two decades in prison for his stinging calls f
or democracy in China, said Liu had often been allowed to operate freely and h
ad criticized proponents for more sweeping changes.

“In my observation, the Nobel Peace Prize is going to Liu because he is diffe
rent from the majority of people in opposition. He made more gestures of coope
ration with the government and made more criticism of other resisters who suff
ered,” Wei told AFP in Washington, where he lives in exile.

While China has denounced the Nobel committee, Wei said that Beijing’s critic
ism was comparatively low-key.

“That might be the main reason that the Norwegians were finally able to withs
tand the pressure,” Wei said.

Wei said that the Nobel would help Liu leave jail earlier and raise the profil
e of moderate reformists, in the process encouraging Chinese to work within th
e system.

“Unless the political system of the Chinese government is indeed heading for
a peaceful evolution, political stability would serve to consolidate the one-p
arty dictatorship and be negative to both reformists and revolutionaries,” he
said.

Wei said there were “tens of thousands” of Chinese who would deserve the Nob
el Peace Prize including Hu Jia, a jailed advocate for AIDS patients, Chen Gua
ngcheng, who exposed corruption in the one-child policy, and missing human rig
hts lawyer Gao Zhisheng.

Wei himself has been tipped for the Nobel Peace Prize in the past.

A former electrician at the Beijing zoo, Wei rose to prominence after leader M
ao Zedong died in 1976 and the government encouraged Chinese to put up posters
airing grievances about past excesses.

Wei boldly put up a poster urging democracy and signed his name to it. He spen
t a total of 18 years in prison, partially on death row, until an appeal by th
en US president Bill Clinton allowed him to go into exile.

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