Critics of China ought to know the line which must not be crossed.
There is more than meets the eye in the high-profile trial, conviction, and meting out of an 11-year sentence of Liu Xiao Bo, the Chinese intellectual dissident who had been the "brains" befind Charter 08, a naive, simplistic "Western Moon is Rounder" promotion of a purported Manifesto which sought to ape and transform China into a "Western Model" of democracy.
The glove of Western-style democracy, as naively propounded by Charter 08, simply does not and cannot fit China, in my view.
The context by which this trial and conviction of Liu Xiao Bo has to be gauged from a Chinese perspective, based on Chinese values and priorities, its history, and its state of civil society, which is clearly defiant and resistant to foreign, especially Western interloping, meddling, and interference.
The more the heads of states of Europe hector and insult China and its officials, the more stiffened and defiant China and its peoples are against the West.
Gweillos from the West are naive if not ignorant if they spin the case as one predicated in unbriddled freedom of expression and the rights to ideas, which under Western "Europeanized" notions of basic fundamental freedoms, brooks no infringement by the state.
Liu Xiao Bo was not simply convicted by his ideas and writings, but by the fact that in expressing these ideas, he manipulated, machinated, and used the West and especially Western media and official institutions, whether as an actor or a tool, to destabilize and attempt to overthrow the Chinese government, over its substance of one-party rule.
This is a path of divergence which clearly placed Mr. Liu in the path an "irreconciliable critic" of China acting in bad faith,and serving as a bludgeon on behalf of the West.
This is a devious subterfuge by the West, and by coat-tailing behind Western China bashing and Chinese demonization, Liu Xiao Bo is a "han jian, " i.e. a traitor, a "colonial."
No matter how unhappy or critical a Chinese national is about Chinese governance or about its officials or about its system of one-party Communist Party rule, in the eyes and honest view of a Chinese citizen, a line must not be crossed and the principle of national sovereignty and Chinese dignity must not be abriged in and by "coat-tailing," or riding the waves of the West, especially its media and official institutions, as a bludgeon and hatchet to attack China from the outside.
Liu Xiao Bo understood this as a Chinese yet he sided with the West, and sucked up to the West by betraying this basic fundamental tenet which all Chinese understands.
In the case of Liu Xiao Bo, he was deliberately calibrating, dribbling, leaking, massaging the Western news media as a shill, an amplifier, a broadcast disseminator to attack and destabilize China from the outside. In so doing, he insulted not just the national sovereignty of China, but also collectively caused the collective Chinese people "lose face" in the outside world.
Given China's horrific history of Western imperialist meddling, bullyng, and extra-territorial occupation and carving out of Chinese soil, heaping insults upon the Chinese peoples, metaporized by the insulting street signs at the gates of foreign concessions and colonies, e.g. in Shanghai, a century ago, with "No dogs and Chinese allowed," the stiffening resistance an anger of the Chinese peoples over the "nefarious" acts of Liu Xiao Bo must be understood.
In the eyes of the gweillos and Western news media, Liu Xiao Bo is a "dissident," a victim prosecuted and persecuted for his ideas.
In the eyes of the Chinese peoples and its officials, Liu Xiao Bo is a "han jian," a traitor, an Western ass-licker, a "Western Moon is Rounder" compradore, a naive, craven "Western Fart is more fragrant" colonial, who worships "Western-style" democracy, which has proven to irreconcialiable, unworkable, and impossible under the unique circumstances and conditions of China.
"Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred ideas contend"....... but please, don't use, ride, or be used by the West as a weapon or tool, wittingly or unwittingly, to try to destabilize, demonize, and bash China, especially on the outside.
To all Chinese, this is a "no-no." Comprende ?
Conider one of the perspective from a Western expat in China, who sees this in context, yet refused to get off his "high horse" from a white knight's perspective. His blog at Huffington Post is set forth in the link below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-doctoroff/a-chinese-dissidents-conv_b_403766.html
