China’s ‘Fault Lines’: Yu Jie On His New Biography of Liu Xiaobo

The New York Review of Books -Ian Johnson

AP Photo/Cliff Owen

Chinese writer Yu Jie at the National Press Club in Washington, January 18, 2012

Yu Jie is one of China’s most prominent essayists and critics, with more than thirty books to his name. His latest work is a biography of his friend, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, that was published in Chinese in Hong Kong a few weeks ago. It is not the first time he has stirred up controversy in China. Yu first gained fame in 1998 at age twenty-five for his book Fire and Ice, a series of biting, satirical essays on contemporary society. Within two years, he was already blacklisted by most publishers. An intensely moralistic person, he also angered many Chinese intellectuals for arguing that they failed to match actions to words.
In 2003, Yu converted to Christianity and increasingly complemented his provocative writing with political activism of his own. He was an early signer of Charter 08, the landmark human rights manifesto, and in 2010 cemented his position as a leading political critic by writing a biography of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in which he refers to his subject as “China’s best actor.” Last year, Yu completed a rough draft of his biography of Liu Xiaobo, who is now serving an eleven-year prison sentence. Authorities warned Yu that he too would be jailed if the book was published and put him under house arrest for several months. In January, he fled China with his wife and son for the United States, where he now resides.

I spoke to Mr. Yu at a church in the Washington area.

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Ian Johnson: How did you get to know Liu Xiaobo?
Yu Jie: In 1998 my first book came out and he was in jail. His wife thought that he should see what young people were thinking. Young people were becoming critical and so she took it to him in prison. He had a lot of criticisms—and in fact my thinking then wasn’t too clear. But [the writer] Liao Yiwu was friends with Liu and very good friends with me. When Liu got out of jail, Liao thought it was a pity that we shouldn’t be friends so he introduced us to each other. We got along well from the start and we’d meet every two weeks or so. Our wives were also close friends.

After he was arrested, you decided to write the biography. What was your motivation?
I want to explain his ideas. Not many know his work.

But some Western scholars know about Liu.
Less than you would think. Andrew Nathan (of Columbia University) knows about him and Geremie Barmé wrote a great essay on him. But few do. It’s a strange situation.

Full interview here.