Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism: Chinese Dissidents and the Legacy of Liu Xiaobo

Abstract

Just as historian Alan Wood said in his “Preface” to Limits to autocracy (1995), “… while I recognize the dangers to truth of relating scholarship to life, I also believe that we who live by the pen bear some measure of obligation, however tenuous, to those who die by the sword”, this special focus issue of Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations: An International Journal dedicated to Liu Xiaobo at the first anniversary of his passing, we believe, could be seen as doing a part in fulfilling such an obligation to contribute to the world some understanding, however modest the effort, of the significance of the life and death of Liu Xiaobo.

Keywords: China, dissent, dissidents, Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping