When the Tiananmen protests erupted, Liu was abroad but chose to return. After the protesters were bloodily suppressed, many of the Tiananmen leaders who could left the country; Liu, too, after a brief stint in prison, had opportunities to leave. But like Tan Sitong, he chose to stay in China, where he mattered most. Even after a second, harsher stint in jail, Liu was determined to remain and keep pushing for basic political rights. He was risking not the immediate arrival of soldiers, but the inevitable and life-threatening imprisonment that befalls all people who challenge state power in China today. [...]
This didn’t mean shunning protests or direct action, but prioritizing the more realistic and—even though Liu often provocatively said he was in favor of complete westernization—very Confucian idea of promoting social change through one’s own life and actions. He said Chinese should study “the non-democratic way we live,” and “consciously attempt to put democratic ideals into practice in our own personal relationships (between teachers and students, fathers and sons, husbands and wives, and between friends).”
Liu’s moderation culminated in Charter 08, a petition for political change that relied heavily on rights already enshrined in China’s constitution and in internationally recognized UN treaties. He helped draft Charter 08’s careful language, and he did much to persuade others to sign it. As a result, in 2009 he was sentenced to eleven years for “subversion of state power.” [...]
In a way, this is in fact the crux of the issue: what is China’s historic arc? China’s authoritarian leaders justified their reign through mysticism: that the forces of history had chosen the Communist Party. Then, after thirty years of political upheaval and famines ended in the late 1970s, the Party adopted the role of a development dictatorship: it developed, therefore it ruled.
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