HONG KONG – The Norwegian Nobel Committee made an outstanding choice in awarding this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, the best-known of China's imprisoned and persecuted democracy activists. Seen from within the dark shadow of Chinese sovereignty, the decision looks like one of the committee's best ever.

As an author and advocate of Charter 08, a document calling for democracy and political reforms and signed by hundreds of intellectuals and others, 54-year-old Liu drew retaliation from China's leaders, with their politically manipulated legal system, who wanted to make an example of someone. Therefore, he's serving an 11-year prison term for alleged “subversion of state power”.

A former literature professor, Liu also participated in the 1989 peaceful protests in Tiananmen Square that lasted until the government sent in soldiers who conducted the Beijing Massacre, killing thousands of innocent people. Then he spent much of the 1990s in jail, at a “labor re-education camp” and under house arrest.

Rightly (and more justly than mainland-Chinese court decisions), the Nobel Committee chose Liu, from among a record 237 nominations, for his “long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China”. It cited “a close connection between human rights and peace”.

Chinese government officials bristled, saying that such recognition for one of their prisoners “violated and blasphemed” the award. What nonsense!

The fact that Liu languishes in a Chinese prison doesn't make him a criminal in the world's eyes – not when his “crime” is daring to speak and write in a peaceful quest for basic democracy and human rights that much of the world takes for granted. By crushing dissent and jailing dissidents, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commits the real misdeeds, true crimes against humanity within its own country.

In threatening repercussions for relations with Norway, the Chinese government compounds wrongdoing with misunderstanding. Unlike Chinese courts, the Nobel Committee operates without political interference. Otherwise, its decisions (like many by the CCP) never could command respect. Apparently, the concept of government limitations baffles Chinese leaders.

Liu's peace prize, the first for a Chinese dissident, represents a triumph and incentive for the entire dissident community. All of China's government-sanctioned global preening and strutting, including at the Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo, amount to no more than chicken droppings until the central government respects its 1.3 billion people and treats them fairly.

As the planet's most populous nation, China badly needs a system of governance that includes basic freedoms, democratic reforms and peaceful regime change. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to such a deserving winner gives a nudge in the right direction.

ARCHIVES