BEIJING — Accelerating its assault on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, China denounced the prize on Friday as a political tool of the West, and an official warned that countries acknowledging the honor would “bear the consequences.”
China Assails Nobel Peace Prize as ‘Card’ of West
Published: November 5, 2010
A commentary in the principal party newspaper People’s Daily suggested that Mr. Liu’s award was a plot by the United States and other Western democracies that “fear the rise of China” and seek to subvert its political system.
Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai reinforced that critique, calling the prize a “highly politicized event” and telling foreign countries they had a stark choice between challenging China’s judicial system and developing friendly relations with Beijing, The Associated Press reported.
China’s Communist hierarchy has bitterly criticized the award since its announcement nearly a month ago, calling Mr. Liu a criminal and asserting that giving him the award demeans the prize.
Mr. Liu, an author and intellectual who issued a call for democratic reforms in China in late 2008, received an 11-year prison sentence this year for seeking to subvert Communist rule. His wife Liu Xia, under house arrest in Beijing, has invited scores of supporters to attend next month’s Nobel ceremony, but few believe the government will allow them or her to attend.
The actions on Friday came on the heels of reports that China had pressured European nations in written démarches to boycott the Nobel ceremony next month in Oslo and to refrain from congratulating Mr. Liu on the award.
China’s vigorous reaction to the award has been viewed by many outsiders as an effort to wield its newfound economic muscle to assert its political interests worldwide.
The commentary published Friday said the award was a Western plot modeled on the Nobel prizes awarded to two figures who “spearheaded” the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The peace prize was given in 1975 to Andrei Sakharov, the leading Soviet dissident at the time, and in 1990 to Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Communist leader whose efforts to reform the Soviet political model helped bring about its collapse.
Those awards exposed the peace prize as “a political card played by the United States and some European countries” to weaken regimes that do not meet their standards, the article said.
“Now, it has nothing to do with peace, and even runs in the opposite direction,” it said. “It is openly subversive under the name of the people.”
The article argued that the only two Nobel peace prize recipients linked to China — Mr. Liu and the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader — seek to undermine the country’s established order.
“Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo once again reflects the strong attempts of Western countries to intervene in the political process in China,” the commentary stated. “It is a well-planned event, premeditated and long organized by Western countries, and is part of a series of actions by the U.S., its allies and companies to undermine China.”
The article was signed Guo Shu, but it was not clear whether that was the real name of the author or, as if often the case, a pseudonym for a work written by a party committee.
In China’s second attack on the prize on Friday, Mr. Cui, the vice foreign minister, issued a veiled threat to countries that recognize the award.
“What image do they want to leave for the ordinary Chinese people?” he asked reporters, according to The A.P. “The choice is out there, and it will be their own judgment to make their choice.
“If they make a wrong choice, they have to bear the consequences.” He did not elaborate on the consequences.
The A.P. also reported Friday that a number of European nations had acknowledged receiving China’s appeal to boycott the Nobel ceremony in Oslo next month, but those nations nevertheless plan to send their diplomats.