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Commentators discuss the implications of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo despite fierce opposition from the Chinese government.

In the global edition of Chinese government press agency's site Xinhua that by giving a convict the prize, the Committee "pulled the old trick" of trying to impose Western values on the rest of the world:

"Liu has done everything he could to subvert the Chinese government, and that suits the strategy of some organizations and people in the West toward China. That's why some people in the West immediately embraced the Nobel Committee's decision, launching a new round of China-bashing."

that China's reaction to the criticism is like that of an adolescent:

"If China sees itself as a future superpower that will one day rival America for global pre-eminence, it had better get used to putting up with the kind of criticism that comes with being the big kid on the block. From invading Iraq to the setting up of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, America has taken decisions that have drawn the world's opprobrium, even hatred, in recent years. However it hasn't hesitated to justify or, if necessary, modify actions many have felt unconscionable.
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"It is a measure of China's worrying brittleness that it could not take the Nobel Committee's decision on the chin and argue the case for its authoritarian system of government and the political stability it brings to a country barely three decades out of dictatorship."

[subscription required] that the list of countries boycotting the prize giving at the request of China illustrates that the West has lost its monopoly on economic and political power:

"The absence of Saudi Arabia, Russia and China tomorrow underlines a shift in the global balance of power from liberal democracies to resource-rich dictatorships. It was once axiomatic that economic growth would eventually create a middle class that would successfully demand democracy. No longer. Zhang Zuhua, Dr Liu's co-author of Charter 08, a manifesto for human rights, said last week that the Communist Party risks triggering a revolution if it fails to reform. But that doesn't look like happening any time soon."

While the India's move to ignore China's request not to attend, in the same paper the Nobel prize is not worth a quarrel:

"Chinese attempts to block an Asian Development Bank loan to India, tension over the status of Arunachal Pradesh, its backing for Pakistani attempts to keep Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed on the UN terror list - these are the substantive issues New Delhi should be focussing on. And to engage Beijing on these, it must face up to the reality that it's in a geopolitically weaker position than its northern neighbour at the moment and work towards creating a conducive atmosphere for dialogue."

International director of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders President Obama, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, has a special responsibility to advocate for the freedom of fellow laureate Liu:

"Obama should attend the Nobel ceremony and take the opportunity to speak publicly about China's worsening human rights conditions. He should ask Chinese President Hu Jintao to free Liu, release his wife from house arrest and allow them to travel to Oslo. Indeed, Obama has a solemn responsibility to speak for the Chinese citizens who cannot, to give substance to the words in his acceptance speech in Oslo a year ago: 'Peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to speak freely or worship as they please, choose their own leaders or assemble without fear.'"

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