no conception of moral absolutes

Really awful attempt at mind reading China on the sentencing of Liu Xiaobo:

Chinese have no conception of moral absolutes. The "individual" is not a fundamental building block of society. The clan's interest, defined on both familial and national levels, remains the basis of all acceptable conduct. The Chinese worldview is cyclical, with the forces of yin and yang, light and darkness, positive and negative, rebalancing themselves across time and space. To boot, the structure of the universe -- and society -- is characterized by an intricate inter-connectivity. Without whipping up an algebraic lather, suffice it to say that Chinese philosophy and morality frowns upon rights that exist independent of context. Torture, or even murder, facilitated through a complaint judiciary subordinated to the Party, will be "justified" -- practically all citizens support, by international standards, indiscriminate application of the death penalty -- if it militates against "chaos." Progress is built on a foundation of "stability." Order is a prerequisite to advancement. Universal rights, while appreciated as lovely ideals, are not viewed as "practical" given China's current stage of social and economic development. Human rights questions are resolved based on whether they promote, or degrade, "harmony."

These conceptions are certainly around, though I doubt that you’d hear them expressed with all the cosmic guff. Absent that, what you have are bog standard authoritarian sentiments you can hear in any society, irrespective of its “stage of social and economic development . In Liu Xiaobo’s case I’d guess you would be more likely to hear stuff like what does he want to cause trouble for, things aren’t so bad and why does he want to go round consorting with foreigners against his own country and I’ve had a rotten time with officials even though I never did anything, why should he get away with it, and so on: all the products of frustration and resentment you get in any society, particularly under a dictatorship. There’s absolutely no call to give this stuff a culturalist gloss and apply it to everyone. Contrast Doctorow’s vision of the Chinese consensus with the opinions of China’s most popular blogger, which are, needless to say, every bit as “Chinese”.

Liu was sentenced for his role in developing and propagating Charter ’08, modeled on the Czech Charter 77, which attracted a good deal of publicity internationally while basically dying on its arse in China. Shortly after it appeared, the eminent sociologist Qin Hui explained why he declined to sign it.

...what basically inhibited support for Charter 77 was sheer fear of repression. In post 1989 China, however, while political reform came to a halt, economically there was an unmistakable shift. Social injustices—created by the economic miracle that the market economy and globalisation brought with it—quickly led to a “breakdown of consensus,” and a deeply divided civil society. Some of those who’d benefited from the economic reforms acquired a taste for manipulating power for personal gain, hence wanted no democracy; while a fundamentalist anti-reform sentiment emerged among some who’d lost out. They wanted a Cultural Revolution-type “democracy,” completely at odds with the liberal orientation of Charter 08. It may thus be said that Chinese people are by now inhibited from supporting Charter 08 by more than fear alone. For many, it’s probably not even mainly fear. In China today, rather than the spirit of democracy being inspired by the declarations of principle of a few courageous souls, the case for constitutional democracy needs to be argued.

In other words, what you have is not a monolithically authoritarian society united in the pursuit of harmony, but one which contains a great deal of diverse opinion about what to change and how to go about it. Yet what people like Doctoroff and Martin Jacques seem to be arguing is that because democracy needs to be argued for, it therefore must be argued against. And because people aren’t on the streets rioting against Liu Xiaobo’s sentence, then they all must be in favour of it.

Comments

[Ken MacLeod]

Doctoroff, not Doctorow.

[jamie]

amended, thanks