China cares what the world thinks, but only to a point

While the United States suf- fers with a diplomatic black eye inflicted by Wikileaks’ release of cables that spoke in unflattering terms about U.S. allies and enemies alike, China has its own diplomatic dilemma. The difference is that China’s is purely self-inflicted.

When the Nobel Prize committee announced that it would award the Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, China had several choices in how to react.

Releasing Liu and allowing him to travel to Oslo to claim his prize and the acclaim that went with it clearly wasn’t an option. No totalitarian regime is going to do that.

But even Cold War dissidents Andrei Sakharov of the Soviet Union and Lech Walesa of Poland were able to have their wives collect their prizes for them. And the 18-year-old son of Myanmar democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi accepted her award in 1991.

China didn’t just react to what it perceived as an insult, it overreacted. For the first time since 1936, when Adolf Hitler prevented German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from accepting the award, no one was at the ceremony to represent the winner.

Liu’s wife was put under house arrest, held virtually incommunicado in a Beijing apartment. Other dissidents were rounded up and imprisoned or put under house arrest, lest they leave the country. Web sites and foreign broadcasts were blocked to keep the Chinese people from seeing an empty chair on the stage where Liu should have been. Bar and restaurant owners in Beijing reported being warned by police not to allow Nobel celebrations in their establishments.

China brought diplomatic pressure on political allies and countries that are economically dependent on it, and 18 nations joined a Nobel Peace Prize boycott. Among them was the Philippines, which not only has growing economic ties with China, but which has five of its citizens facing the death penalty in China for drug trafficking. President Benigno Aquino III, who has been seeking clemency for the prisoners, said his first responsibility was to the needs of his citizens.

A quiet revolutionary

Liu, 54, is not a typical revolutionary. He is a literature professor, poet and essayist who is credited with saving lives during the government crackdown on demonstrators at Tiananmen Square by convincing many students to flee as tanks arrived. Still, he was branded as a subversive, and he was convicted of inciting subversion for his part in drafting “Charter 08,” a blueprint for a democratic China. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison in2008.

When the possibility of his being named a Nobel laureate became known, Chinese diplomats tried putting pressure on the Nobel committee.

When that didn’t work, it took off the gloves. China described Liu’s receiving the prestigious $1.4 million prize as an attack on its political and legal system. It warned others that attending the ceremony would be seen as a sign of disrespect.

There is a sobering contradiction in all this. On the one hand, China is obviously sensitive to what it perceives as a slight to its prestige. On the other hand, when push comes to shove, China is not about to let outside influences loosen its iron grip on its people.

And it must cause some rethinking by people who have held onto the conventional wisdom that capitalism and freedom go hand in hand. China, which is now outselling almost every other country in the world, has shown that the pursuit of the almighty dollar (or juan) and the pursuit of liberty are not necessarily inclusive.