Liu Xiaobo

b. 1955, Changchun, Jilin

Literary critic

Liu studied and taught in the Literature Department of Beijing Normal University, receiving his doctoral degree in 1988. He first drew national attention criticizing the Root-seeking school (Xungen pai) in literature and those promoting the value of cultural traditions in the humanities. He developed his arguments in ‘Unavoidable Reflections’ (Wufa huibide fansi, 1986), and thereafter in books based on the philosophy of Nietzsche, among them Aesthetics and Freedom (Shenmei yü ren de ziyou, 1989) and A Critique of Choice: Dialogues with Li Zehou (Xuanzhe de pipan: yü Li Zehou duihuya, 1988). Opposing the leading aesthetician, Li Zehou, Liu argued that great art was inevitably achieved by abandoning existing values. Thus, the need for individual freedoms outweighs the value of harmony with a given cultural order.

In 1989, while visiting Columbia University, he returned to Beijing to join the demonstrations at Tiananmen Square and was arrested for counter-revolutionary activities. After his release, he again was arrested in 1996 for co-authoring a petition on behalf of democratic reforms that called for the impeachment of Jiang Zemin for violating the existing constitution. Released in 1999, he became a columnist for journals based outside China, while his work remains banned inside the country.

Further reading

Barmé, Geremie R. (1990). ‘Confession, Redemption and Death: Liu Xiaobo and the Protest Movement of 1989.’ In George Hicks (ed), The Broken Mirror: China after Tiananmen. Essex: Longman.

Mok, Ka-ho (1998). Intellectuals and the State in Post-Mao China. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Solomon, Jon (2002). ‘The Sovereign Police and Knowledgeable Bodies: Liu Xiaobo’s Exilic Critique of Politics and Knowledge’. positions: east asia cultures critique 10.2 (Fall): 399–430.

EDWARD GUNN