Tag: Liu Xiaobo

This award will not change the Chinese Government in terms of its treatment of dissidents or its attitude towards other Nations.
Other Nations’ perception or attitude China does not matter to China.
If at all there is going to be a change it shall be toughening of stand against the award recipient and other dissidents.
China is  a case beyond curing.

Story:

The Chinese government addresses such issues strictly in terms of one question: What serves the Communist Party’s monopoly grip on power?

In the short term, the government’s response to Liu Xiaobo’s peace prize will certainly be to try to expunge all mention of it from the media and the Internet. And insofar as the news does leak out, government leaders will try to stimulate and exploit nationalist sentiment by charging that foreigners are meddling in China’s affairs and that Liu has lost face for the motherland — for whom we, the Communist Party, are the sole legitimate representative. There is no doubt that this will be the short-term response. Indeed the first signs are already visible.

In the long run, though, the government authorities must decide if the perpetual international embarrassment is worth keeping one bookish free-thinker behind bars. They will have to calculate whether their power is better served by releasing Liu and subjecting him to the garden-variety harassment and control that other dissidents routinely endure.

The big question is not the government’s reaction but the long-term reaction of China’s people. In my view, the prize will add considerable prestige and weight to alternate visions of China’s future that originate with those outside of the government.

The prize will help Chinese people to see and feel that they have choices in what they pin their Chinese identity on. “China” in the 21st-century can be something bigger than, better than, and healthier than a crusty old-fashioned authoritarian government.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/10/08/when-dissidents-win-the-nobel-peace-prize/what-best-serves-the-communist-party?permid=69#comment69

Related articles;

Within hours of the announcement of a Nobel Peace Prize for Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese government reacted as if reading from a script. As expected—and as was appropriate, given that Liu is an advocate of the free press—it erased news of the prize from Chinese Web sites, removed Liu’s name from Twitter, and jammed a CNN broadcast from Oslo. It also issued a fairly standard string of denunciations. A spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry described Liu as a “convicted criminal sentenced to jail by Chinese justice authorities for violation of Chinese law.” By giving him the prize, the committee had “totally gone against the purpose of the award” and “committed blasphemy against the peace prize.”

http://www.slate.com/id/2270523/