Guest Comments by Jens Galschiot and Lasse Galschiot Markus

Editor's Note: Jens Galschiot, a well-known Danish sculptor, often addresses human-rights issues. Lasse, his son, assists him.

DENMARK -- On December 10, for the first time ever, an empty chair represented the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, in this case Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. The world's most populous country chose to keep Liu in prison and to make sure that his family did not receive the award in his place. China had placed his wife under house arrest.

What a disgraceful way for China to treat its critics! We must demand that China behave like a decent nation.

In recent years, China's economic power and influence have become obvious. Its impressive economic growth has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. This is an important and necessary development for the world's social balance.

But for China to be accepted and respected as a superpower, it must honor human rights and provide its citizens with the most basic rights like freedom of speech and an independent judiciary. Food alone is not enough.

Due to China's growing economic clout, the willingness of Western nations to critique it has diminished. But with Liu's Nobel Prize, this changed. Again condemnation of Beijing's notorious human-rights violations rang out -- which is somewhat China's own fault.

Even before nominations for the award, China had threatened Norway with economic and diplomatic sanctions. China fails to understand that the Nobel committee operates independently of the state and cannot be controlled by the Norwegian government.

Then China tried to use diplomatic and economic pressures to prevent some countries from attending the award ceremony. Again, this shows China's lack of understanding of how democracy works. And the pressure had no impact. Only nations that also violate human rights heeded China's wishes.

China's leaders should learn to show greater courage. In a world of Facebook, Twitter, Google, text-messages, cell phones and Wikileaks, even China cannot keep its people in ignorance for long. So it had might as well allow its citizens to enjoy basic rights.

We urge China to open its eyes to the modern world in which freedoms of speech and information are a matter of course.

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