Charter 08

Charter 08
Simplified Chinese零八宪章
Traditional Chinese零八憲章
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinLíngbā Xiànzhāng
Yue: Cantonese
Jyutpingling4 baat3 hin3 zoeng1

Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by 303 Chinese dissident intellectuals and human rights activists.[1] It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting its name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Czechoslovakia. Since its release, more than 10,000 people inside and outside China have signed the charter.[2][3][4] After unsuccessful reform efforts in 1989 and 1998 by the Chinese democracy movement, Charter 08 was the first challenge to one-party rule that declared the end of one-party rule to be its goal; it has been described as the first one with a unified strategy.[5]

In 2009, one of the authors of Charter 08, Liu Xiaobo, was sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment for "inciting subversion of state power" because of his involvement. A year later, Liu was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Seven years later in July 2017, he died of terminal liver cancer in the prison after having been granted medical parole.

  1. ^ "Over 5000 people have signed the Charter 08 (《零八宪章》签名已超过5000人)". Boxun. 17 December 2008. Archived from the original on 29 November 2009. Retrieved 15 December 2008.
  2. ^ A Nobel Prize for a Chinese Dissident Archived 2017-08-04 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, September 20, 2010
  3. ^ China's Leaders Should Talk to Charter 08 Group Archived 2017-01-29 at the Wayback Machine, Washington Post, 30 January 2009.
  4. ^ Small green shoots of rebellion among ordinary Chinese Archived 2010-12-31 at the Wayback Machine, Irish Times, 31 January 2009.
  5. ^ Fulda, Andreas (2019-09-17). "The Chinese Communist Party Wants It All". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 2019-09-18. Retrieved 2021-06-15.