For years, visitors to China returned with stories of forests of construction cranes erecting skyscrapers as fast as the old hutongs could be emptied, and cars replacing rivers of bicycles and donkeys. China was the economic juggernaut driving the world economy into the 21st century, and the 2008 Olympics were the pinnacle of Chinese grandeur--including a record 51 gold medals.Yet behind this "miracle," a growing network of Chinese dissidents protested the throttling of free speech, the displacement of the poor and the channeling of riches to the Communist Party elite. Among these contrarian voices, the loudest belonged to Liu Xiaobo--poet, scholar, professor and informal leader of the Tiananmen Square protests. No Enemies, No Hatred is a selection of his essays and poems that bravely challenge his country's roughshod indifference to its people's freedom.
In 2009, Liu was sentenced to 11 years in a Chinese prison; the following year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. His broad interests touch on everything from the sayings of Confucius ("clever... practical, even slick, but show no aesthetic inspiration or real profundity") to the Internet ("[its] contributions to freedom of expression in China have been... hard to overstate") to the Olympics ("a super-politicized, super-extravagant elite gold-medalism. A nation obsessed with gold medals will never turn into a great civilized nation").
There is no better way to temper our enthusiasm for everything China than to read these words of one Chinese man willing to speak his mind about what goes on behind the public relations wall of countless red and yellow banners. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.