NEWS THAT bookmaker Paddy Power had paid out on jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize this year cannot have been welcomed by the Beijing government, which jailed the writer as a subversive dissident last year.
While the amount paid out was just €5,000, a tiny amount in what was clearly a publicity stunt, today’s award has the Chinese Communist Party casting anxious eyes towards Oslo to see who will win the honour, fearful of the damage to China’s international reputation if Liu, or other dissidents in the frame for the award such as imprisoned HIV/Aids activist Hu Jia, should win.
The 54-year-old Liu is now a favourite to win the peace prize in what would be a major embarrassment for Beijing.
Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said giving Mr Liu the award would mark a significant defeat for Beijing and signal a major victory for human rights activists everywhere else.
Mr Liu is one of China’s most famous dissidents, a writer, teacher and political essayist currently serving an 11-year jail term for subversion. Over two decades he has become one of China’s most famous naysayers for his advocacy for freedom of expression, human rights and democracy.
Last year, he was jailed on charges of "incitement to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system" because of his key role in writing Charter 08,a political manifesto calling for gradual political reforms in China, modelled on the Czech Charter 77.This was a groundbreaking pamphlet in which Czech and Slovak intellectuals pledged "to strive individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in our country and throughout the world". More than 300 people, including some of China's leading intellectuals, signed the Charter 08document and it earned Mr Liu the longest sentence ever given out for dissent.
Mr Liu previously spent nearly two years in jail for joining the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square. He also prevented more bloodshed by successfully negotiating with the army the evacuation of the last remaining students on the square in the early morning of June 4th.
When it comes to the Nobel Prizes, China is fighting a war on two fronts. At the same time as it is warning Norway of worse relations if Mr Liu is given the Nobel Prize, China is bemoaning the fact that the country which invented the compass, gunpowder and possibly pasta, as well as being the world’s great economic success story of recent years, cannot win a Nobel for something useful like physics or chemistry. Nine ethnic Chinese have previously won Nobel Prizes, including CN Yang in 1957 for his work on subatomic particles. But none of them is a Chinese national, and, with one exception, their groundbreaking work was done outside China. There was consternation when dissident Gao Xingjian won the gong for literature in 2000, although the Chinese always insist he is French, not Chinese. In 1989, news that the peace prize had gone to the Dalai Lama was met with rage.