German relations with China follow former US track - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Less than a decade ago, the relations between China and the US dominated globally, not only for the economy but also for human rights. When the flight of Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel prize winner Liu Xiaobo, to Berlin last week, shows one thing, it is that Germany is taking over that role, says Pulitzer price winner Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, who gave a eulogy on Liu Xiaobo in Berlin, last Friday, at DW.

DW:

"The German government is one of the few major Western governments that is still actively pursuing a human rights agenda," said Ian Johnson, a Beijing-based, Pulitzer Prize-winning author who also spoke at the ceremony. "The US has retreated to just trade issues, the same with the UK." 

Johnson added that the service would encourage people in China "who are fighting for a more open society to know that there's a church full of people commemorating Liu Xiaobo here."

More at DW.

You can read a translation of Ian Johnson's eulogy at the ChinaFile here:

‘Liu Knew His Responsibility in History’.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

Ian Johnson at Friday's meeting in Berlin

Are you looking for more political analysts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

The monthly trip of Liu Xia - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Award-winning journalist Ian Johnson reports in ChinaFile on the monthly trip poet Liu Xia makes to visit her husband, Nobel price winner Lui Xiaobo, and her slowly increasing production of new poems. "A small, fragile woman with extremely short-cropped hair that sets off her high cheekbones and bright, wide eyes."

Ian Johnson:

Every month, the Chinese poet, photographer, and artist Liu Xia boards a train bound for the country’s north. Carrying food and books and escorted by four plainclothes police officers, she heads for a prison in the city of Jinzhou where her husband, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, is serving a sentence for subversion of state power. The ritual rarely varies: rising early to get the morning train, a short visit, and the train back.

The ride used to take six hours each way, but Ms. Liu now makes it in just three—a tribute to the power and might of a state that rolls out high-speed rail lines as quickly as it snaps up those who oppose its vision of China’s future. Now 55 years old, Ms. Liu is one of those victims: a small, fragile woman with extremely short-cropped hair that sets off her high cheekbones and bright, wide eyes.

She has lived under strict police surveillance ever since her husband won his prize in 2010, one year into his 11-year prison term. For more than three years, she could not see friends or even receive phone calls. Those close to her spoke of her becoming unbalanced from the pressure. When Associated Press journalists snuck past guards and knocked on her door in 2012, she trembled, cried, and said her situation was “Kafkaesque.” In 2014, people close to her reported that she was hospitalized due to heart ailments and depression. Now friends say that she is regaining strength and devoting herself to reading and writing. While her husband is most famous for his blunt, sarcastic, and highly topical essays, Ms. Liu’s works have taken longer to become known—not surprising for an artist who cannot publish or exhibit in her home country. But her poems and artworks are emerging in their own right as major statements about life under authoritarianism and reaching a more global audience, thanks to a newly translated volume of her poetry and a biography of her husband that includes large sections on her own life. In addition, new translations of Liu Xiaobo’s poetry show the central part that his wife has played over the past two decades.

Much more (including poems) at ChinaFile.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

Related articles

• Six Years On, China's Jailed Nobel Laureate, Family Face a Bleak Future
• 40 Years After Death, Mao's Mixed Legacy Looms Over China
• Making banned documentaries - Ian Johnson interviews Ai Xiaoming