iLook China

Democratic trumpets are sounding the charge against China.

Sinophobes are shouting, “I told you so!”

The Western media is splashing the news on the Internet, across the front pages of newspapers and reporting it on TV and radio.

For example, The Huffington Post says, “Imprisoned Chinese democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that drew furious condemnation from the authoritarian government and calls from world leaders including President Barack Obama for Liu’s quick release.”

Outside the Middle Kingdom, the government of China cannot win this public relations battle against democratic nations unified in their condemnation of non-democratic governments—at least those governments that do not have lots of underground oil as the authoritarian government in Saudi Arabia.

I’m sure that Liu Xiaobo believes in his mission as many in the West do that live in democracies.

However, I agree with America’s Founding Fathers, who in 1776 founded a republic—not the democracy the U.S. has today.

President John Adams (1735 – 1826), the second president of the U.S., said, “That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world,” and “Democracy … while it lasts is more bloody than either [aristocracy or monarchy]. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Mao was a dictator known as China’s modern emperor.

A few years after coming to power in 1949, Mao launched the disastrous Great Leap Forward followed by the infamy of The Cultural Revolution—both were driven by the mob and the results were about 30 million dead from famine, disease and tyranny.

In fact, before the communists came to power in China, there was more than a century of madness that almost destroyed China, which was caused by the West.

Soon after Mao died, Deng Xiaoping launched China’s capitalist revolution.

Then in 1982, China wrote the first draft of a constitution designed to build a republic – not a democracy.

Since then, China has been moving slowly down a road toward a more representative republic that fits China’s culture, which will probably never include democratic activists like Liu Xiaobo.

I hope China never becomes the kind of democracy President John Adams warned America against. It may be too late for the U.S. to return to the republic America’s Founding Fathers built, but it isn’t too late for China to avoid the same trap as they mature into a freer republic for the Chinese people.

Right or wrong, China’s central government does not want mob rule and that is the reason they locked up Liu Xiaobo and silenced his voice in China.

It is obvious that The Nobel Peace Prize has become a political tool to spread the mob rule of democracy that America’s Founding Fathers warned us about.

I urge China to release Liu Xiaobo from prison then send him to the democracy of his choice and never let him return.

Once living in Norway or France, maybe Liu Xiaobo will write a book about his experiences then win the Noble Prize for Literature.

I wonder what America’s Founding Fathers would have done with a Liu Xiaobo – probably ignored him as most Americans would have done then.

Nobel Prizes are awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which has been accused of having a political agenda. They have also been accused of Eurocentrism.

For the 2010 Nobel Prizes, there were five committee members, one man and four women.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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