“Charter ’08”, called for a Western-style political system in China and privatisation of all enterprises and farm land. Not surprisingly, the organisations he has headed received financial support from the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy. Studies show, however, that where transitions to electoral democracy occur in countries with low levels of average wealth, the rule of law does not necessarily follow, but instability and low levels of development do. Neither does electoral democracy deliver good governance, nor even sustain itself under such conditions.
     Nowhere in the post-communist or developing world has there been the fair privatisation Liu claims to seek. Privatisation in eastern Europe often led to massive thefts of public property by oligarchs and became deeply unpopular, with strong majorities of people in all post-Communist countries wanting its revision. Privatisation is also disliked in India, Latin America and China itself, while studies of privatisation in many parts of the world show it can have a deleterious effect on development. Land privatisation in China would rapidly create land concentration and landless peasants.
     Forty years ago, a Nobel prize committee upheld formerly imprisoned writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a symbol of freedom against the Soviet regime. As with Liu, it may have been unaware of or chose to ignore Solzhenitsyn’s classically reactionary views: his own version of authoritarianism, an animus toward Jews, denunciation of the US for not pursuing the war in Vietnam more vigorously, condemnation of Amnesty International as too liberal, and support for the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco.  The Nobel peace prize is a prize for politics of certain kind. The Norwegian Nobel Institute director has noted that the Nobel Committee has most often selected “those who had spoken out … against the Communist dictators in Moscow and the dictators in Beijing.” French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre recognized the Nobel prizes’ role in the Cold war and refused to accept one in 1964. He stated: “In the present situation, the Nobel Prize stands objectively as a distinction reserved for the writers of the West or the rebels of the East.”  That role has been continued with Liu’s prize.