“Is China scared of the Magna Carta?”
That’s what the Washington Posts asks in reporting that its officials blocked plans to display the document at a Beijing university.
To celebrate the document’s eighth centennial, the British government has taken the Magna Carta on an international tour. But there was an unexpected hiccup in China.
A 1217 version of the Magna Carta was supposed to go on view this week in Beijing’s Renmin University. But Chinese authorities apparently blocked its appearance there; the document went on display instead in the house of the British ambassador to a very limited number of guests. …
Observers have immediately seen the decision in the wider context of China’s authoritarian politics. The country is in the midst of an ongoing crackdown on activists and civil society groups. Communist party diktat specifically rejects reference to “constitutional democracy” or universal values — principles that the Magna Carta is credited with having, to a certain extent, enshrined.
Writing in the International Business Times, William Watkinson points out that “the Magna Carta was established by angry noblemen in the 13th Century rebelling against King John and gave the people of England unprecedented property rights and protection from a ruling monarch. The Magna Carta is … seen as a foundational text of Western thinking and considered to be one of the first articulations of the rights of the individual.”
Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that a seminal writing that shaped Western Civilization and formed the arguments that led to the Declaration of Independence has been banished by the Chinese communist government.
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