I HAVE NO ENEMIES : the life and legacy of liu xiaobo

Late one night in December 2008, police arrived at the home of Liu Xiaobo―China’s leading dissident, a key figure in the prodemocracy manifesto Charter 08―and took him away. When Liu won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize as a political prisoner, the award was bestowed on an empty chair. Inside China, the regime sought to erase every trace of his existence. Liu died of liver cancer in 2017 without ever having been allowed to return home. I Have No Enemies is the definitive biography of Liu Xiaobo, offering a meticulously researched account of the twists and turns of a remarkable life. Perry Link and Wu Dazhi explore Liu’s upbringing, immersion in classical Chinese poetry and philosophy, bold challenges to literary conformity, and involvement in democratic movements. They trace the lifelong evolution of his thinking and chronicle his persecution, incarceration, and death. I Have No Enemies emphasizes Liu’s principled commitment to dissent and the significance of the example he set in China and around the world. Liu was a farsighted strategist whose ultimate goal was “to change a regime by changing a society.” In Tiananmen Square, he showed others how to face down armed soldiers; in daily life, he looked for ways to build a more democratic culture. A powerful record of Liu’s life and times, this book also tells the story of a generation of Chinese intellectuals who sought a better way forward. "Perry Link and Wu Dazhi present a wide-ranging intellectual biography of Liu Xiaobo, the deceased Nobel Peace Prize winner, alongside a recent history of dissent in China. Link and Wu follow Liu's upbringing among early Republican intellectuals, to his deep immersion in classical Chinese poetry and philosophy in graduate school, to his involvement in prodemocracy movements in China, to his persecution, imprisonment, and death in captivity. They also provide an absorbing and up-close, inside look at the second major undulation of contemporary China's democracy movement-the "Citizens' Movement" of 2002-2008, culminating in Charter '08-which has not yet been chronicled and explained either inside or outside of China in a comprehensive way. Most accounts of dissent in China, to date, of course, have concentrated on the street demonstrations of the late 1980s that ended with the Tiananmen massacre of June 4, 1989. This book carries the story forward in absorbing detail up until recent times. In this respect, the book is a history of a generation of Chinese intellectuals as much as a history of one man's influence. It is a fascinating portrait of Liu Xiaobo's iconic life and times in a rapidly changing and increasingly authoritarian Chinese state"-- Provided by publisher Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 A Note on Names 10 Chronology 12 1. Arrest, Trial, and the Road to a Nobel Prize 16 2. Rebel in Embryo 43 3. Puppy Love and Serious Reading 61 4. College Years, and the Mask of Mao Falls 76 5. Aesthetics and Human Freedom 99 6. Mutiny! A Dark Horse Soars 124 7. Gods and Demons Wrestle 151 8. Out Into the World 168 9. In Tiananmen Square 190 10. A “Black Hand” Goes to Prison, Feels Deep Remorse 216 11. Picking up and Starting Over 243 12. Love That Jumps Walls 265 13. In the Service of Underdogs 295 14. Cascading Cases Build a Movement 321 15. An Intellectual Transition 349 16. Stability Maintenance 364 17. Observing the World, Growing at Home 384 18. The Gathering Storm 406 19. Charter 08 431 20. The World Watches a Prison 453 Epilogue: The Legacy of Liu Xiaobo 483 A Final Note from Wu Dazhi 496 Notes 498 Index 536 I Have No Enemies is the definitive biography of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, offering a meticulously researched account of the twists and turns of a remarkable life.