{"id":271,"date":"2012-04-12T12:22:36","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T16:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/?page_id=271"},"modified":"2012-06-12T03:14:10","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T07:14:10","slug":"nathan-andrew-j","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/about-liu-xia\/nathan-andrew-j\/","title":{"rendered":"Nathan, Andrew J. (English)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Liu Xia<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Andrew J. Nathan<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Columbia University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/a>

Andrew James Nathan<\/p><\/div>\n

Liu Xia is best known to the world as the wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, and as the victim of a protracted siege of extralegal house arrest that has been imposed upon her by the Chinese authorities ever since Liu was named for the prize. Less well known is that she is a major Chinese artistic figure in her own right. Born in Beijing in 1959, Liu Xia developed her talents as an artist and writer.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the relatively liberal 1980s she was an active member of the lively modernist literary and art scene that flourished in Beijing. It was then that she fell in love with the controversial young college professor and public intellectual Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xiaobo moved into Liu Xia\u2019s apartment, owned by her one-time employer, the Beijing tax office.<\/p>\n

The two are very different in personality. Liu Xia once told a Western journalist, \u201cI am not politically involved. I behave as if I live in a different world. We discuss politics as little as possible at home. My husband knows that it doesn\u2019t interest me.\u201d[1] Cui Weiping in her essay for this catalogue describes her unwillingness to get involved in the public drama of Tiananmen in 1989. Yet she stood by Liu Xiaobo during his imprisonment after Tiananmen in 1989-91 and again during a period of so-called house arrest which he suffered at an unknown location in Beijing in 1995-1996. When he was committed for a term of labor reeducation in 1996, Liu Xia applied to the camp authorities for permission to marry him.<\/p>\n

Her association with Liu Xiaobo has cost Liu Xia her right to display and publish her creative work. Her work has been banned in China since 1989, even though she was not a participant in Tiananmen and did not sign Charter 08, the liberal manifesto that triggered Liu Xiaobo\u2019s latest and longest prison sentence, an 11-year sentence imposed in December 2009.<\/p>\n

Guy Sorman has obtained the remarkable photos in this exhibition, which were created by Liu Xia during the time of Liu Xiaobo\u2019s labor reeducation in 1996-1999, and her consent to exhibit them. These strangely disturbing and moving photographs reveal profound truths about today\u2019s China, not only in their content and style, but also in the history of their creation, suppression, and now, their exhibition abroad.<\/p>\n

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[1] Spiegel Online International, \u201cGovernment Officials Like to Make People Suffer,\u201d<\/a> November 11, 2010, at http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/world\/0,1518,722392,00.html, accessed January 9, 2012.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Andrew J. Nathan<\/a>,\u00a0Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Columbia University,\u00a0served as chair of the Department of Political Science, 2003-2006. He is co-chair of the board, Human Rights in China, a member of the board of Freedom House, and a member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch, Asia, which he chaired, 1995-2000.\u00a0 He is the regular Asia book reviewer for\u00a0Foreign Affairs<\/em>\u00a0magazine and a member of the editorial boards of the\u00a0Journal of Democracy<\/em>,\u00a0The China Quarterly<\/em>,\u00a0The Journal of Contemporary China<\/em>,\u00a0China Information<\/em>, and others.\u00a0Nathan’s books include\u00a0Peking Politics, 1918-1923<\/em>\u00a0(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976);\u00a0Chinese Democracy<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985);\u00a0Popular Culture in Late Imperial China<\/em>, co-edited with David Johnson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);\u00a0Human Rights in Contemporary China<\/em>, with R. Randle Edwards and Louis Henkin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986);\u00a0China’s Crisis<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990);\u00a0The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security<\/em>, with Robert S. Ross (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997);\u00a0China’s Transition<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Columbia University Press, 1997); and\u00a0The Tiananmen Paper<\/em>s, co-edited with Perry Link (New York: Public Affairs, 2001).<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

(This essay was written especially for the catalogue of\u00a0the 2012 New York showing<\/a>\u00a0of the exhibition\u00a0\u201cThe Silent Strength of Liu Xia\u201d at\u00a0the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, based at Columbia University in New York City. Text copyright \u00a9 2012 by Andrew J. Nathan. All rights reserved.)<\/address>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Liu Xia<\/p>\n

by Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Columbia University<\/p>\n

Andrew James Nathan<\/p>\n

Liu Xia is best known to the world as the wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, and as the victim of a protracted siege of extralegal house arrest that has been imposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":16,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-271","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/271\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/liuxiaphotos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}