Dialy Lessons from Life 08 October 2010 - First Chinese wins Nobel Prize: Liu Xiaobo

"Fri, Oct 08, 2010 AFP - First Chinese wins Nobel Prize: Liu Xiaobo

BEIJING - Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, has been a vocal champion for greater democracy and human rights protection in China for decades.

The 54-year-old, who was previously jailed for his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests, was sentenced in December to 11 more years in prison for subversion - a punishment that earned international condemnation.


Liu was arrested in late 2008 after co-writing Charter 08, a widely circulated petition that called for political reform in the Communist-ruled nation."

This is interesting! It will be intriguing to see how the PRC Government responds to its jailed dissident winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Lessons for me are:

1. there will be a price to pay to stick to your principles and beliefs in this world. This is especially so if you happened to live in a relatively authoritarian nation with a single political power;

2. PRC has opened up quite a bit in the economical front but the political realm is still relatively tight. Dissensions are not welcome with open arms though some are welcome when it played to the dominant political masters' advantage. Still, the 'total freedom of speech and will' of the West is not going to work in PRC where 800-900m of its 1.3B population are still not very educated and living on borderline poverty;

3. The PRC Government will have to handle how these 800-900m people will live a relatively comfortable life without pre-maturely depleting and destroying the fragile environment that provide the resources to afford these people the relatively comfortable life! A big challenge and a paradox.

It also shows me that the Nobel Prize Committee does have a unique way to court controversy and get itself entangled with a newly emerging world power called: PRC!!

Let the show begins ...