Taiwan author gets a bit too free with his speeches

Now, as the Li event gets attention in Beijing, it is being argued that neither Li nor his hosts seemed aware of the others' realities. Li, schooled in the rough and tumble world of Taipei media, filled his speech with sexual references, skipped around from ancient warlords and wisdom to Dwight Eisenhower, and he ridiculed Lian Chan, the former KMT leader whose historic visit last spring was prized by Beijing as a way to undercut Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. Standing at a dais studded with Beijing University's most prominent authorities, Li said he should have gotten the same "red carpet" treatment, as did President Clinton.

Indeed, rarely did Li allow his speeches to stray too far from himself, at one point saying: "There is nobody in history who has done more fighting for freedom of speech than Li Ao. I have written more than 100 books, 96 of which are banned.

Nobody in the world has written that many banned books... What does that prove? If I go to jail, I go to jail."

In Beijing, such words are incendiary. Public speech here is as painstakingly polite and deferential as it is controlled. No one talks openly, let alone on sensitive topics such as freedom of speech, or going to jail.

"[Beijing] didn't realize this is just a very critical person who just wants to criticize what it is that seems to be going wrong," says one European china expert. "Beijing officials are surprised by anything that is not zero sum.... Here, if you are against Taiwan succession, and for unification, you must be for Beijing. But the logic is more complex than this."

Li's university tour on the mainland was reportedly set up by Phoenix TV, whose owner Liu Changle last week told the Washington Post that greater openness and democracy would one day arrive in China, though gradually, and not in a Western form.

Western cable news channels Sunday carrying commentary on Li talk were blacked out; no mention of Li's critique has appeared in state-run media.

Li is a colorful figure in Taiwan. He is from Harbin, born, as he likes to say, "the same year as Elvis Presley." He lived under Japanese occupation, moved to Beijing, then to Taipei at age 14. He was a self-made academic, focusing on Chinese civilization, and lives what he calls a "very liberal" lifestyle. He regularly attacked the nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek, and was twice thrown in jail.

"He's a unique personality on the Taiwan scene, pouring scorn on all parties, though fundamentally a unificationist," says Julian Baum, formerly with the Far East Economic Review, in Taipei. "He has a library of Chinese political history in his head."

As always, the Chinese political world is full of paradox: Last Saturday China's most prominent rock star, Cui Jin, was allowed to play an authentic concert in Beijing for the first time in a decade.

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