Liu Xiaobo: A True "Chairman"

"Lui Xiaobo today has become a true 'chairman'" - anonymous internet post

Attempts by China to demonize and discredit the Nobel Peace Prize and its committee have backfired gloriously, reaching absurd levels of guano. Not only has a simple image of an empty chair aroused fear and panic in the authorities, but television screens turn black whenever the name everyone knows is mentioned. As the New Yorker's Evan Osnos writes, "The Black screen is reserved for a specific kind of unknowing: the denial of something everyone knows."

Is this how a great power acts? It's more like the tantrums of a spoiled brat who expects the world to revolve around his own swollen head. China makes a fool of itself whenever it tries to employ the same tactics it uses domestically on the international community. Fellow citizens may kowtow to Beijing out of fear, but for the rest of the world China is anything but the so-called "Middle Kingdom" it views itself as.
As Lui Xiaobo wrote, "To strangle freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, stifle humanity, and suppress truth." When China's rulers try to do this on an international level they distort the true nature of their country, so much so that China will now forever linger alongside Nazi Germany in the annals of Nobel lore. And for anyone who knows China and its people, that's just one more tragedy - albeit a self-inflicted one - caused by the true enemies of the people - unelected thugs like Hu Jintao.