From the NYTimes, “Chinese Dissident Awarded Nobel Peace Prize“:
BEIJING — Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his writings, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of his pursuit of nonviolent political reform in the world’s most populous country.
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Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is currently serving an 11-year term on charges of “inciting the subversion of state power.” He is the first Chinese citizen to win the Peace Prize.
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In awarding the prize to Mr. Liu, the Norwegian Nobel Committee delivered an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s authoritarian leaders at a time of growing intolerance for domestic dissent and spreading unease internationally over the muscular diplomacy that has accompanied China’s economic rise.
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The prize is an enormous boost for China’s beleaguered reform movement and an affirmation of the two decades Mr. Liu has spent advocating peaceful political change in the face of unremitting hostility from the ruling Chinese Community Party. Blacklisted from academia and barred from publishing in China, Mr. Liu has been harassed and detained repeatedly since 1989, when he stepped into the drama playing out on Tiananmen Square by staging a hunger strike and then negotiating the peaceful retreat of student demonstrators as thousands of soldiers stood by with rifles at the ready.
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“If not for the work of Liu and the others to broker a peaceful withdrawal from the square, Tiananmen Square would have been a field of blood on June 4,” said Gao Yu, a veteran journalist who was arrested in the hours before the tanks began moving through the city.
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Steve
He arguably deserves the award as much or more than Barack Obama.
mistermix
It will be interesting to watch the Chinese squirm over this. And fun.
JGabriel
Congratulations, Mr. Liu.
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WereBear
Hope he gets something out of it. Considering his present circumstances.
JGabriel
WereBear: It comes with a monetary component of about $1.4 million. Whether the Chinese gov’t will ever let him out of jail to access it, of course, is a different matter.
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jon
And Charles Krauthammer sheds yet another tear for George W. Bush.
cschack
The Chinese embassy in Oslo is already acting pissy. They wouldn’t even open for the mailman.
New Yorker
@jon:
Eh, he’s probably penning a column about how Avigdor Lieberman deserves it.
And I wasn’t ever thrilled with Obama’s win. I prefer seeing it go to people resisting oppressive governments (peacefully, of course). I’m happy with this one.
Snarki, child of Loki
The Nobel committee really should issue a public statement regarding the Chinese attempt to jawbone them into not giving the Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.
They should say:
EconWatcher
What will happen in China when you have tens of millions of young men with no realistic prospect of finding women to settle down with, because of the mismatch caused by the one-child policy?
Or to put it another way, what happens when a growing power, with an overcrowded homeland and an insatiable appetite for resources to fuel its economy, finds itself with tens of millions of expendable young men?
If I were Russia, with its vast lands and resources and dwindling population (particularly along the Chinese border), I would be very nervous.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“What will happen in China when you have tens of millions of young men with no realistic prospect of finding women to settle down with, because of the mismatch caused by the one-child policy?”
It’s not the one-child policy, it’s the selective abortion of female fetuses that’s the problem. Which is even more rampant in India.
What will happen? I don’t know. But hopefully market pressures will lead to the end of dowries, which is a big factor in the preference for male children in India.
Cris
So are we going to see a resurgence of conservatives complaining about the Nobel committee making political statements, like they did in 2007 and 2009?
mattH
Oh, the irony. I read an article a day or two ago about the Chinese frustration with not having won a Nobel Prize in the sciences. Best watch what you think you are entitled to.
canuckistani
Isn’t the Dalai Lama a Chinese citizen?