Well, the Chinese authorities have said "No, We
really mean it!." According to
this report in
The New York Times an appeals court has upheld the guilty verdict and prison sentence
recently imposed on
Liu Xiaobo. While this would be troubling if
Liu had simply been exercising his individual right to free speech, it is to my way of thinking especially problematic insofar as his "subversive" acts involved composing the list joint demands that have appeared under the title Charter '08. In short
Liu and the other signatories top the Charter are not just demanding democracy in some future China, but acting democratically in the actually existing China. The report in
The Times makes plain how difficult and necessary such
prefigurative action remains - it notes two other cases, those of Huang
Qi and Tan
Zuoren, who independently have been convicted and imprisoned for speaking out critically about the government.
