Readers who thought I was a little over the top the other day in referring to the current leadership of China as “a clique of bone-headed mafiosi” might find this news story enlightening.
After being held for seven months in a secret jail, Mr Liu, 53, [that’s mild-mannered scholar Liu Xiaobo] was formally arrested for “alleged agitation activities aimed at subversion of government and overthrowing of the socialist system,” according to Xinhua, the [ChiCom] state news agency.
It added that Mr Liu had been “spreading rumours and defaming the government” and that he had “confessed to the charge in preliminary police investigation.”
The crime of inciting a subversion can carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison … … [Liu’s lawyer] said: “The act of subversion involves writing articles or giving interviews and speaking freely. Liu has confessed to this in the past.” … Mr Liu spent two years in prison after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and three years in a labour camp from 1996 for challenging single-party rule and advocating negotiations with the Dalai Lama over Tibet.
Liu is a real gadfly — one of the Awkward Squad, disliked as much by the angry young nationalists of the generation below his own, as by the Communist party capos. The brutish treatment of him speaks volumes about the nature of China’s government.
If the Chinese want to realise their hope of being the 21st century’s great world power, they could make a start by trading in Al Capone’s political philosophy for Al de Tocqueville’s.