Editor’s Note: The below is an expanded version of a piece that appears in the current issue of National Review.

‘I have no enemies, and no hatred.” So wrote Liu Xiaobo in December 2009, shortly before he was sentenced. Perry Link and Wu Dazhi have written a new biography of him: I Have No Enemies. Link is a leading American China scholar; Wu Dazhi was a longtime friend of Liu Xiaobo. And Liu Xiaobo, you will remember, was a Chinese democracy leader, and therefore a political prisoner. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, while a prisoner. He died in 2017, still a prisoner.

His statement in December 2009 continued,

Hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience. The mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life-and-death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy.

That is what Liu Xiaobo wanted: freedom and democracy. After he was sentenced — to eleven years — he said, “I believe that my work has been just, and that someday China will be a free and democratic country.”

Liu Xiaobo was a great man. He is not as famous, worldwide, as, say, Nelson Mandela or Václav Havel. Perry Link makes this point to me in a conversation. Mandela emerged from prison to be president of his country; Havel did the same. Liu Xiaobo died in prison, like so many others in dictatorships all over the world. He was great all the same.

In this new biography, you can see him in his many and extraordinary layers.

Professor Link makes a further point: The South African state, against which Mandela battled, and the Czechoslovakian state, against which Havel battled, were challenging, to say the least. Nasty governments, willing to do nasty things. But the Chinese state, against which Liu Xiaobo pushed? A totalitarian behemoth, suffocating everything beneath it.

Liu Xiaobo was born in 1955. His father, Liu Ling, was a member of the Communist Party and fiercely loyal. He and his wife, Zhang Suqin, had five children, all boys. Liu Xiaobo was in the middle, the third. During the Great Chinese Famine (1959–61), the father got the best food available — he alone got it. The six others in the family got poorer food. This offended the moral sense of young Liu Xiaobo. He and his father were always at odds.

Because Andrei Sakharov was such a great dissident — a moral hero — you can forget that he was also a great scientist (a physicist). Same with Alexander Solzhenitsyn: a great writer (and Nobel laureate in literature).

Stick with Russia a moment. Boris Nemtsov was destined to be a great physicist, or seemed to be. He earned his Ph.D. at 25. His mentor was Vitaly Ginzburg, a Nobel laureate. But Nemtsov felt a kind of calling to enter politics. He wanted to help establish a free and democratic Russia. Ginzburg told him that he was sacrificing a great scientific career. In the end, Nemtsov sacrificed more than that: He was murdered in 2015 within sight of the Kremlin.

Liu Xiaobo was a great literary scholar, and a deep philosopher. He was one of the outstanding academics in the whole of vast China. He would have left a mark if he had not spent one moment in dissidence. His friend Ding Zilin used to chide him for spending so much time on political work, when he had these immense scholarly gifts. She is a professor of philosophy (retired). She also understood Liu Xiaobo very, very well.

Ding Zilin is the leader of the Tiananmen Mothers group. Her son, Jiang Jielian, was killed in the massacre, age 17.

Liu Xiaobo was at Tiananmen Square. He was one of the “elder” leaders who brokered a deal between the students and the military. This allowed thousands of students to leave the square in relative peace. Otherwise, the massacre would have been bloodier than it was. The body count would have been much higher.

Václav Havel, in Prague, meant a lot to dissidents such as Liu Xiaobo. They admired his example. They read his writings, including “The Power of the Powerless.” Havel said that ordinary citizens could “live in truth” and thereby shake the state, which counted on their cooperation in lies.

In 1977, Havel and his friends issued “Charter 77,” calling for human rights in their country. In 2008, Liu Xiaobo and his friends issued “Charter 08.” They did so on December 10, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Liu Xiaobo was arrested and imprisoned for what turned out to be the final time. (He had been arrested and imprisoned three times before, starting in 1989, after the massacre.)

Havel was a key part of the campaign to get Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize. It came, as we have said, in 2010. The prize for 1935 had been awarded to another political prisoner: Carl von Ossietzky, in Germany. This outraged the Führer and his gang. They forbade Germans to accept any Nobel prize, and created their own prizes, as substitutes. Ossietzky died in prison (in 1938), as Liu Xiaobo would.

A further historical note: The Nobel committee declined to award its peace prize to Josef Stalin or any other Soviet official. Unhappy about this, Stalin created his own prize: the Stalin Peace Prize, or, more formally, the Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace among Peoples.

In 2010, the Chinese Communists were, of course, furious that Liu Xiaobo had been awarded the Nobel prize. They called the committee’s choice an “obscenity.” They placed the laureate’s wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest. They tried their best to shut the name of Liu Xiaobo out of all media. And, like the Nazis and Soviet Communists before them, they created their own prize: the Confucius Peace Prize.

Among its first recipients was Vladimir Putin. Later, Fidel Castro received it.

In 2022, Ales Bialiatski, a political prisoner of the Belarusian dictatorship, was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Will he, too, die in prison, like Ossietzky and Liu Xiaobo?

Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer, on July 13, 2017. Some people say, “They killed him.” Did they? Did the authorities, in effect, kill this great man? They withheld medical treatment for a very long time, says Perry Link. In saving this prisoner — this thorn in their side, this rebuke to them — they had no interest.

Professor Link is a legend in Chinese dissident circles, and in China studies, though he would hate to hear it. He would deny it up and down. “From my experience,” I wrote in 2012, “Link is modest, but others are immodest in his behalf.” Those words appeared in a piece called “Scholars with Spine.” Link did not especially want me to write about him then, and he did not especially want me to write about him now. Like a commissar, I gave him no choice.

He is an authority on the Chinese language and its literature. He is also steeped in Chinese popular culture. He has taken the trouble to know the “other China,” apart from “official China.” The China of the back alleys and byways. His facility with language, including dialects, has opened many doors to him.

Years ago, I spoke with Eugene D. Genovese, the U.S. historian. He was telling me about his education and mentioned Frank Tannenbaum, a professor at Columbia University, who was a Latin Americanist. “He knew the inner life of Mexico, the inner life of Peru, to an extraordinary degree,” said Genovese. The same may be said of Perry Link and China.

What’s more, Link is a friend to dissidents — a “scholar with spine” indeed. In 1989, he was working in Beijing. The day after the massacre, when things were excruciatingly tense, he took Fang Lizhi and his wife, Li Shuxian, to the U.S. embassy. Fang Lizhi (an astrophysicist, as well as a democracy campaigner) was No. 1 on the government’s Most Wanted list.

Link wound up on the government’s blacklist — he is banned from China. When he related the news to Liu Binyan, the eminent dissident writer, who was exiled in the United States, Liu Binyan responded, “Congratulations. Now you are an honorary Chinese.”

Fang Lizhi taught at the University of Arizona, once he was in the United States. He died in 2012, age 76. He was not only a brilliant and brave man, he was also a blithe spirit. Perry Link tells the following story about him.

In May 1989, shortly before the massacre, and his departure from China, Fang Lizhi was interviewed by a Western reporter. At the conclusion of the interview, the reporter asked whether he might follow up, if necessary. Sure, said Fang Lizhi, giving the reporter his telephone number. “We’ve heard your phone is tapped,” said the reporter. “Is it?” “I assume so,” said Fang Lizhi. “Well, doesn’t that . . . bother you?” asked the reporter. “No,” answered Fang Lizhi. “For years I’ve been trying to get them to listen to me. And if this is what it takes, fine!”

Fang Lizhi, says Link, “owned a mischievous wit. It could puncture pomposity, leaven depression, and bring joy to people who needed it.”

Professor Link and another China scholar, Andrew J. Nathan, of Columbia, edited The Tiananmen Papers (2001). This is a trove of secret, or previously secret, Chinese-government documents relating to the massacre. Professor Nathan, like Link, is on the Chinese blacklist.

I have a question for Link: “Generally speaking, do people in China know about the Tiananmen massacre or do they not know about it?” Older people probably know about it, says Link. Younger people probably do not. Link has Chinese students at his university in California who have never heard of it. A few years ago, he had one student who had heard about it. He is the son of Communist Party officials. He was quiet in class, but one day he came to Link during office hours.

With utmost sincerity, the student said, “Tell me: Were more students killed by soldiers or were more soldiers killed by students?” His ignorance was “monumental,” says Link — and it was of course not the young man’s fault.

Link makes a further point to me: In China, parents who know about the massacre may not tell their children about it — anything at all. Not because they want them to be ignorant. Rather, the children may repeat what they heard, which could get everyone in trouble.

On this business of the blacklist, there are good things and bad things, says Link — good things about being on it and bad things. To begin with the bad: You are denied a physical presence in China, a country you love. Link has plenty of ways of keeping in touch. But he can no longer roam those back alleys and byways.

Worse, though, a blacklisted scholar is a tool of the Chinese government. To put it another way, he is a cautionary tale. The government says to foreign scholars, in so many words, “You don’t want to wind up like Link and Nathan, do you? You want to keep coming here, don’t you? You better mind your p’s and q’s.”

(And, typically, they do, often to their shame.)

Well, what could be good about being on the blacklist? First, you may be admired for it. You may gain some notoriety, of a positive kind. Professor Link tells a memorable story.

One day, he was walking across campus when a kid on a skateboard pulled up in front of him. “Professor Link!” he said. “Yes?” said the professor. “I hear you’re on the Chinese-government blacklist!” “Yes, that’s right.” “Dude!” With that, the student gave a thumbs-up and skateboarded off.

The best thing about being on the blacklist, however, is this: You lose your fear of being put on the blacklist. You speak and act more freely than ever. Link cites an old proverb from Chinese farmers: “A dead pig is not afraid of boiling water.” Link and other such scholars are “dead pigs,” unafraid, not hedging their bets.

Link is tolerant of young scholars — young and untenured scholars — who hedge. (Tolerant to a fault, I might say.) He is far less tolerant of senior and tenured scholars who refrain from telling what they know, lest it displease the visa-granters in Beijing. Professors enjoy a privileged life, a wonderful life, says Link. In return, they owe it to students and others to tell the truth, as they know it.

Perry Link was born in 1944. As a youth, he moved around a lot and had various adventures. The family lived in India for two separate years: Perry’s fifth-grade year and his tenth-grade year. He learned to play the mridangam. He learned many things.

His father, Eugene, was a professor of history. As Perry explains in his memoirs — which he is drafting even now, and of which he has given me a preview — his father was a peculiar social and political animal: “During the Cultural Revolution he wore a Mao badge on his cap even as he proudly drove a Mercedes.” His mother, Beulah, was a schoolteacher, and a woman of exceptional warmth. “Many people believe their mother is the best in the world,” writes Perry, “but in my case it was true.”

Young Link went to Deerfield Academy, the prep school in Massachusetts, and then to Harvard. He took Chinese but majored in philosophy. One of his professors was John Rawls. When it came time to defend his senior thesis, Link was disappointed to learn that he would not be examined by illustrious full professors but by young unknowns: Ronald Dworkin and Robert Nozick (soon to be titans).

After graduation, what to do? Link thought he would pursue graduate studies in philosophy or go to law school. He was accepted by Harvard’s law school. First, however, he took advantage of a “traveling fellowship”: the Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship. Michael was a son of Nelson and Mary Rockefeller, who graduated from Harvard in 1960. The next year, he died during an expedition in the Far Pacific — New Guinea. The fellowship in his honor, which still exists, is meant for “travel, study, and adventure.” A recipient is away for a year, after which he writes about what he has experienced.

Perry Link went to Hong Kong. And never looked back. He was smitten by things Chinese. When he returned to Harvard, he earned a Ph.D. in East Asian languages and civilizations. He would teach at Princeton, UCLA, Princeton again, and the University of California at Riverside, where he has been since 2008.

A word about Hong Kong. “Even five years ago,” Link tells me, “the city was a bustling, freewheeling, vital, and even optimistic place. And now it’s crushed.” That is a painful thing to contemplate, and a much more painful thing to endure, for the people of Hong Kong.

When he was starting out, Link was enamored of Mao and the Communist revolution. This feeling could not long survive contact with China — experience in China. Quickly, Link realized that there were lies everywhere. The government was built on a mountain of lies. Link came to value the truth all the more, and to insist on it in his work. I suspect this is what attracted him to dissidents, and they to him: the principle, the imperative, of truth-telling.

After that final sentencing in 2009, Liu Xiaobo said that “someday China will be a free and democratic country.” No man knoweth the hour, says Perry Link. It could happen “tomorrow, next year, next decade — I don’t know.” But the regime may be more fragile than many think. Link cites Ding Zilin, the retired philosophy professor, the old friend of Liu Xiaobo. She is now 86 and lives alone. When she goes out to buy vegetables, she is followed by two plainclothes policemen, every time.

Think of it, says Link: Xi Jinping is in charge of the largest standing army in the world and the second-largest economy, and his police agents have to follow Ding Zilin on her vegetable runs? Is that a government confident of its stability?

What China needs, says Link, is “the disappearance of this Communist one-party system.” He knows the phrase “regime change” is radioactive and verboten, at least in certain quarters. “But in the end,” he says, “regime change is the only way out, and there’s no way to compromise.”

In the long, long history of China, few foreigners must have loved this country as much as Perry Link has. And he loves it enough to want it to throw off its chains.