NED’s Awards Harass China

The U.S. National Endowment for Democracy has recently decided to award the 2014 Democracy Award to imprisoned human rights activists Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong, with the award being given this week. From the start of this year, these anti-China activists have written essays aimed at Beijing’s political unrest of 25 years ago, making all kinds of “commemorations.” This year, NED choosing to grant Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong the Democracy Award, and arranging it at the end of May, probably cost a lot of trouble.

Liu Xiaobo and Xu Zhiyong are not very renowned in China. One reason is that the things they have done are not in sync with the Chinese public’s core concerns for a beautiful life. They have long been separated from mainstream Chinese society, long hovering in the fringes.

Liu and Xu were imprisoned for breaking the law. What they are most committed to doing is demonstrating to the Chinese community how to confront the existing national system. They believe that their practices have a spirit of sacrifice. They had assembled and received support from a few small groups in the country. Liu Xiaobo earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, and Xu Zhiyong has also joined the ranks of Western awards in recent years.

The Chinese court’s decision to send Liu and Xu to prison was based on a great deal of information from the Chinese legal system and mainstream society. If this can be disputed, then only history is capable of looking back on today in the future. History’s foundation is definitely China’s footprint in its own chosen path and never will it be a justification or a moving speech from Liu, Xu, or their supporters.

Today, an easier way to determine the nature of Liu and Xu’s actions is to see who and how powerful their supporters are. Everyone knows what a Nobel Prize supposedly means, and NED can highlight this issue more clearly.

This foundation was established in 1983, at the peak of the Cold War, as new leverage when the Reagan administration believed the CIA had committed a few “inconvenient” acts. It is primarily funded by the U.S. government for all projects serving the national interests of the United States. NED helped Rabiye Qadir settle in the United States, as one example of something Chinese people are most likely to read about. Allen Weinstein, one of NED’s founders, said, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

As China continues to grow, American and Western European ideology awards have been given to Chinese people more and more frequently, but they almost overwhelmingly choose opponents of China’s current system, while China’s tremendously positive achievements go unnoticed. These awards are not only spiritual links between the Western forces and China’s adversaries, but have also become tools for the West to demonstrate against China’s political and legal systems.

Under the guise of “universal value,” China’s political adversaries openly allied with Western powers. When China emerged as a world power and sank into a geopolitical dispute with the United States, this alliance strengthened the West’s ability to play with China. We do not know whether those people who were confrontational in China and won awards from the West are just proud, moved or even ashamed to face their elders and countrymen for being leverage for the West against China.

We have nothing to say about NED. Harassing China’s modernization is its duty and responsibility. As for those Chinese “dissidents,” we cannot help but have hope. We can hope that they apply the interests of the country and its people to their personal pursuits, such as Liu Xiaobo’s experience of poverty in China and seeing the whole process of China’s current road to societal prosperity. Xu Zhiyong is old enough to help him establish definite historical vision. On top of that, they are both intellectuals and could easily understand why they are so popular in the West.

In the last 25 years, those who have fought against China’s political system through illegal means have been the losers. Western support does not change this basic fact. China will continue to develop, and the West will continue to lose. They should not use the bad luck that curses their ancestral land in exchange for personal fortunes. That would be very immoral, and that curse will never come true.