Maureen Howard reads from A Higher Kind of Loyalty by Liu Binyan at the 2009 Human Rights Book Fair.

Liu joined the Communist Party of China in 1944 and was a journalist at China Youth Daily from 1951-1957. After publishing articles criticizing press censorship in 1956, Liu was branded a rightist and was expelled from the Party. Liu was rehabilitated in 1979 and became the leading investigative reporter for the People’s Daily. In 1987 he became a target of Deng Xiaoping’s crackdown on “bourgeois liberalism” and was expelled from the Party again. He moved to the U.S. in 1988. A Higher Kind of Loyalty is his memoir. 

From A Higher Kind of Loyalty

I have finally finished this book, though not entirely to my own satisfaction. The problem may lie in my life as I lived it, not in my life as I have written it. What’s more, in the more than sixty years that I have lived, it is not only I but the Chinese people as a whole who have not lived life as it should be lived. In which case, what I need to change is not a book, but my life story, or even the life story of our nation. How I wish I had life to live all over again. But then, that is also a frightening prospect. I might have been a totally different person, too clever perhaps, or overly cautious. And if there is one thing to my credit, it is that I have never been too sharp or overly cautious. It seems that our nation is too ancient and too clever for its own good.

There are too many people crouched under their individual shells of security; there are too many people who profess to see through the ways of the world and yet hold on to its pleasures. These are the clever ones. I am struck with pity as I watch them go through life without accomplishing anything. Pity for them and for our nation. In China, there are already too many talented people lying in their graves for others to throw themselves away so recklessly. I have never tested my IQ, but judging from my youthful performance, I would guess it is not outstanding. I never was a precocious child and never at the top of my class. Science courses, in which I was not interested, were always a trial. Not that I didn’t work hard. But on the whole, I had little time for study. Especially during the last thirty or more years. When there would have been time for study, I had to do manual labor. Later on, there were no books. And then, when books were available, my time was not my own. How I wish I could shut myself away and sit down to read. Even at the rate of one book a day, I could not finish all the books on my reading list. On my visit to the United States in 1988, reading was a top priority. Yet except for a few days in September, I was not able to keep it up.

Looking back on my life, I see so many things that I have yearned for but have not been able to enjoy. I had been able to spend only a very short period of my childhood in the countryside where one could fly a kite, and I was there at the perfect age for kite-flying. After that, I never had a chance to fly kites again. In the winter of 1956, I bought a big kite for my four-year-old son; we planned to fly it the next spring. But the next spring I was so busy. And in the spring following that, I had to leave for the countryside for reform through manual labor.

Now I am able to fly kites with my grandsons, but I am an alien here in a land that does not belong to me. Besides, in Beijing the best place for kite-flying is Tiananmen Square, but no kites are being flown there. The only things being flown there now are military helicopters. Military helicopters releasing leaflets on martial law against the students’ demonstration.

When will I be able to embrace my two darling grandsons? That will depend on how long the military is positioned against the people. Arriving in the United States, I was faced with two choices, to bury myself in books, or to accept the warm invitations of Chinese students to talk to them. I chose the latter. Chinese students studying abroad are hungry for news of home, and I could not disappoint them. I decided to tell them about the real state of things back home. I knew the risk I was running: if my words happened to offend the authorities, it would be impossible for me to speak out or exert any influence on the mainland, and after all, it is only on the mainland that I am in my element.

Looking forward now, I do not indulge in sentiment. The price that has been wrested from the Chinese people was inevitable, I suppose. We greeted the founding of this state with wild acclaim in 1949; we submitted so docilely to its rule from the fifties right through to the seventies. What is there for me to say? But the Chinese people have now changed. They will not tolerate this state any longer. The handful of octogenarians and the privileged bureaucratic clique whom they represent will neither change their ways nor hand over power. Thus they are doomed to destruction. Yes, the people will pay a bloody price, but in the end they will shake off this monstrous thing that is draining them of their life’s blood. This is the end of the Chinese people’s adolescence and their initiation into political maturity. They are no longer waiting to be liberated; they are now ready to pay the price to liberate themselves. I have shared all the trials, undergone all the deceptions inflicted on the Chinese people. But I do not envy my luckier compatriots who have had a smooth and easy path. Looking back, I should say that the gains outweigh the losses. As my life is nearing its end, I finally see the light breaking out of the darkness. I have at least done my part and am ready to do more. This is happiness for me.

One morning after the events of June 4, I walked across Harvard Square and saw the people sitting in the shade at an outdoor cafe leafing through the newspapers, and for the first time it occurred to me what a blessing peace is. My compatriots on the Chinese mainland are fleeing right and left, in danger of their lives. Then and there I suddenly rediscovered the value of freedom. At this moment, the Chinese people are one step closer to the freedom they have dreamt of and fought for during the last hundred years.

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