The World

Watching the Chinese government’s reaction to the award today of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, I can only conclude that it needs to hire a new PR agency.

The government is outraged by the suggestion that it is a repressive regime that does not respect human rights. So how does it react to the Nobel ceremony today? It rounds up dissidents all over the country. It launches it own rival Confucius Prize for peace -only to find that even the Taiwanese politician awarded the prize appears to be bemused by it. It turns the decision over whether countries will send ambassadors to the Nobel ceremony into a crude trial of strength with the West – and rounds up a veritable rogues’ gallery of authoritarians in support of its position: Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Russia. Terrific.

The mature and politically astute reaction would simply have been to re-state China’s position on Liu Xiaobo and then just to have ignored the Nobel ceremony. Instead, the Chinese government has revealed its repressive instincts and its insecurity.

It is important to the Chinese government to argue that the Nobel Prize is an insult to the entire Chinese people, rather than a rebuke to the current Chinese government. China’s spokesman today said that most Chinese people agreed with the government’s stance on Liu Xiaobo. Given the government’s control over the education system and the media, this might even be true.

But the idea that the Chinese people as a whole embrace authoritarianism and have no interest in human rights really needs to be rejected. Take a look for example at the editorials, not in the official Chinese media, but in the parts of the Chinese-speaking world where the media are free – like Taiwan and Hong Kong. Remember that Charter 08 - the call for human rights in China that Liu Xiaobo was so closely associated with - was initially signed by over 300 mainland-based intellectuals, and subsequently by thousands more. These are remarkable figures, given the personal risks involved. Or read this really fine open letter on individual rights in China from Bao Tong, a former member of the Communist Party central commitee and friend of Liu Xiaobo.