Opinion Reading between the red lines

After all,it is not just the Party that fears a Big-Bang version of democracy. There is a deep and widely-shared fear of chaos and social upheaval,which a sudden crisis could produce. This also explains the intellectual preoccupation with issues of state capacity,social harmony and the ideology-versus-pragmatism debate.

Read this with the fact that the growing “rights consciousness” in China could actually be more of a new “rules consciousness.” Protests seem to be consciously framed in the authorised language of the state — precisely in order to signal that they do not challenge state legitimacy. What emerges is a highly interactive,complex picture of the intellectual-state relationship,albeit a far less glamorous one.

Reading between these red lines nudges us to think beyond the simplistic labels of “establishment” and “independent intellectuals”. There are no neat or precise categories. Lumping together all intellectuals as dissidents is as much a caricature as it assuming that they are all prisoners of the state. Many activist-intellectuals would be uncomfortable by being labelled “dissident.” Others,like Ma Jun,recipient of the Magsaysay award,fit none of these categories clearly.

The reality is that neither the intellectual nor the state is a homogenous actor. There was deep opposition from some dissident exiles against granting the award to Liu: In a letter released recently,14 of them accused Liu “of maligning fellow activists” and being “soft on China’s leaders.” Similarly,it would be wrong to assume that critiques always come from outside the political system. In recent weeks,political reforms have once again climbed to the top of the Party agenda,with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao publicly acknowledging that the need for democracy and freedom in China is “irresistible”. Wen’s views also found powerful resonance in an open letter circulated days before the Nobel announcement and signed by 23 Party elders. The letter called for the abolition of censorship and the dismantling of the Central Propaganda Department which the signatories referred to as “the invisible black hand.”

In many ways,the Nobel to Liu Xiaobo reopens a debate that had never really drawn to a close. Many of these questions have always existed in a sort of freeze frame as it were,suspended between lived memory and state erasure. Anyone who has followed China’s domestic debates knows only too well that there has always been a cyclical pattern,of an expanding and contracting social space. Read thus,Liu’s Nobel constitutes an important footnote to a critical period in China’s intellectual and political history.

The writer is an associate professor at the Centre for Policy Research,New Delhi.