Supporters of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo hold
up his pictures
during a demonstration outside China's
Liaison Office in Hong
Kong on Friday.
Global Times, People's
Republic of China
Nobel Peace Prize
is Biased Toward the West
Does
the West, through the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, unfairly single out China
for criticism? According to this editorial from China's strictly state-run
Global Times, awarding Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo with the Peace
Prize was a 'display of arrogance and prejudice against a country that has made
the most remarkable economic and social progress.' Once again, Beijing seems to
regard economic prowess as a pass for not providing the political freedoms
enshrined in its own constitution.
Friday the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize
was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, an incarcerated Chinese criminal.
The Nobel committee once
again displayed its arrogance and prejudice against a country that has made the
most remarkable economic and social progress in the past three decades.
The Nobel Prize has been
generally perceived as a prestigious award in China, but many Chinese feel the
Peace Prize is loaded with Western ideology.
Last century, the prize was
awarded several times to pro-Western advocates in the former Soviet Union, including
Mikhail Gorbachev, whose efforts directly led to the disintegration of the
Soviet Union. The Western preference of the Nobel committee didn't disappear
with the end of the Cold War.
By making paranoid choices,
the committee continues to deny China's development.
In 1989, the Dalai Lama, a
separatist, won the prize. Liu Xiaobo, the new winner, wants to copy Western
political systems in China.
There are many different ways
to view these two men, but neither are among those who have made constructive
contributions to China's peace and growth.
Other Chinese dissidents,
such as Rebiya Kadeer and Hu Jia, were reportedly on the shortlist for the
Peace Prize this year, which naturally generates animosity toward the award
among many Chinese.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
They have reason to question
whether the Nobel Peace Prize has been degraded to a political tool that serves
an anti-China purpose. It seems that instead of peace and unity in China, the
Nobel committee would like to see the country split by an ideological rift, or
better yet, collapse like the Soviet Union.
Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to
11 years in jail by the Chinese government last year, after which several
countries tried to interfere into China's domestic affairs. What the Nobel
committee did Friday was a continuation of that act.
The controversy in the West
over Liu Xiaobo's sentence is not based on legal concerns. It is based on a
desire to impose Western values on China.
Obviously, the Nobel Peace
Prize this year is meant to irritate China, but it won't succeed. On the
contrary, the committee disgraced itself.
The award, however, does
clarify how difficult it is for China to win applause from the West during
China's development, and that China needs to be more determined and confident in
choosing its own path, which is different from the Western approach.
The Nobel committee made an
unwise choice, but it and the political force it represents cannot dictate
China's future growth. China's success speaks louder than the Nobel Peace
Prize.
