LONDON - The Chinese boycott of the Nobel Peace Prize, which this year was
awarded to a jailed Chinese dissident, has evoked unflattering associations
with brutal regimes that imprisoned political opponents and refused to
acknowledge their popular sway.
But despite an ingrained obsession with its international image, China has not
flinched at the adverse publicity. By contrast, Beijing has waged a tenacious
diplomatic campaign to dissuade diplomats from attending this week's prize
ceremony in Oslo.
It has used old-fashioned communist propaganda methods to smear the name of the
democracy activist Liu Xiaobo and present
the peace award process as a plot to subvert rising China.
"The Chinese authorities genuinely see this as a very serious conspiracy, a
plot to undermine China's peaceful evolution, and they want to demonstrate that
they are willing to pay the price to protect their interests," says Joseph
Cheng, professor of political science at the City University in Hong Kong.
But the intensive counter-offensive suggests much more than just the communist
leadership's intolerance of international criticism of its human-rights records
and its vulnerability at home. It reveals Beijing's determination to take on
universal values in the belief that it has the mandate to chart its own terms
of engagement with the world.
Beijing has now publicized the launch of a new, home-grown peace award - the
Confucius Peace award - to counter the choice of Liu Xiaobo as the first
Chinese national to win. The prize was created "to interpret the viewpoints of
peace of the Chinese people", the new quasi-government award committee said in
a statement released to agencies in Beijing.
The first to be honored is Lien Chan, Taiwan's former vice president and the
honorary chairman of its Nationalist Party, for having "built a bridge of peace
between the mainland and Taiwan", said the statement. The committee decided to
award the prize on Thursday, a day before the Nobel honour for Liu Xiaobo.
"The new [Confucian] prize is a very good example of the dilemma the current
Chinese state faces - how it wants to participate in the existing international
order but according to its own interpretation of it," says Rana Mitter,
professor at the Modern China Institute for Chinese Studies at Oxford
University.
"The new prize is actually a variation of the international peace award. Nobels
are regarded as a matter of international prestige and the Chinese want to have
a say in [the selection process] of which Chinese person wins this prestige,"
he adds.
The Nobel Peace prize committee describes Liu Xiaobo as the "foremost symbol"
of the human rights struggle in China. A key figure of the 1989 Tiananmen
democracy movement, Liu was among the people that drafted Charter 08 - a call
for multiparty democracy and political reform in China. He is serving an
11-year sentence for "inciting subversion".
The Nobel committee decided to honor him for his "long and non-violent
struggle" and his belief that there exists a close link between human rights
and peace. Beijing says Liu is a criminal and describes the award as a
"blasphemy".
Supporters of this year's Nobel peace prize are "clowns" perpetrating a farce,
the Foreign Ministry said this week. They are fundamentally opposed to China's
development and want to interfere in the country's politics and legal system,
the ministry's spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular press briefing. "We will
not change because of interference by a few clowns," she added.
The announcement of Liu Xiaobo's prize on October 8 appears to have divided the
international community too. The number of countries that have declined the
invitation to attend the award ceremony on Friday has risen from the initial
six a few weeks ago to 19 including China, the Norwegian Nobel committee said.
"China has been arm-twisting behind the scenes to stop governments from
attending the Nobel Prize ceremony, using a combination of political pressure
and economic blackmail," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International director for
the Asia-Pacific.
Last month, Beijing delivered a stark warning to all countries. Cui Tiankai, a
deputy foreign minister, said countries that chose to take part in the
"political game" over Liu Xiaobo will have to "bear the consequences".
Among the countries that will be absent from the ceremony are long-time
regional allies like Pakistan and ideological allies like Venezuela, business
partners Saudi Arabia and Iran and countries dependent on China's diplomatic
support like Sudan.
Since the Nobel announcement, Liu's wife, Liu Xia, has been put under house
arrest, and police have kept tight control over the movements of his relatives
and other dissidents. Last month Liu's lawyer was stopped from flying to
Britain, and other prominent liberal intellectuals have been stopped from
leaving the country in a campaign aimed at making sure not a single Chinese
attends the ceremony.
The gold medal, diploma and US$1.4 million prize can be presented only to Liu
Xiaobo or to close family members under the rules of the Norwegian Nobel
Committee. If the committee fails to present the medal and diploma, it will
invite comparisons with its refusal to do so when Carl von Ossietzky, the
German journalist and concentration camp prisoner, was banned by the Adolf
Hitler regime from travelling to Oslo in 1935.
Yang Jianli, a former Chinese dissident, now the liaison to the Nobel committee
on behalf of Liu, wrote a letter to communist party chief Hu Jintao: "I do not
want the image of an empty seat at the Noble Prize Ceremony to become the
symbol of China in the 21st century."
Liu is one of only three people to receive the Peace prize while imprisoned by
their own governments. The others are Carl von Ossietzky and Aung San Suu Kyi,
the Myanmar opposition leader who was awarded the Nobel in 1991.
(Inter Press Service)
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