Profs discuss effect of Nobel Prize on human rights in China

Eight days in China doesn’t make you an expert, according to Penn professor Michael Horowitz — but that didn’t stop him, Amy Gadsden and Jacques deLisle from discussing Chinese human-rights activist Liu Xiabo and his controversial Nobel Peace Prize over dinner on Wednesday in Steinberg-Deitrich Hall.

As students munched on fried rice and bagels provided by the Alpha Kappa Delta Phi sorority, which organized the event, professor and event facilitator Avery Goldstein provided students with his take on the situation.

Xiaobo is a political prisoner in China who was chosen by the Norwegian board to receive the Peace Prize for his nonviolent protests for increased human rights in China.

The panel members agreed that the award wasn’t a comment on Xiaobo’s actions. Instead, they said they believe Xiaobo’s Peace Prize is a strategic move to draw attention to China’s human-rights policies — what the panelists described as “send[ing] up a smoke signal” that the Chinese should recognize as a call for change.

Prompted by student questions, the panelists also discussed what role human rights should play in China and how democracy could be achieved.

DeLisle explained that a “fear of democratizing process” may prevent political changes, but the panelists agreed that Xiaobo and his Peace Prize could spark reforms for greater accountability, transparency and human rights in politics.

According to deLisle, the Chinese government is very “sensitive to costs” and is successful at adjusting when it finds the need.

For now, Horowitz said, the “government needs to decide what kind of China it wants to be.”

And Gadsden hopes that reforms aren’t just possible — she said she hopes that this award marks the first step in a movement that has already begun.

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