Click here for the New York Times article.
What happened...
Liu Xiaobo, an avid advocate for democracy in China, received the Nobel Peace Prize while serving an 11-year prison sentence in his home country. He was recognized for being a persistent and unquenchable voice for freedom in a state that notably lacks it. He is the first Chinese national to receive the prize.
How I found out...
When I got back from a day out in Beijing, I got on the Times website, as usual. I was totally stunned by the cover story I saw floating right in front of me. Apparently my reaction panicked one of my Chinese "suitemates" sitting on the couch opposite me, because she asked if I was ok. I just told her, "Come here! Come here! Oh my God, come read this!" In hindsight, maybe having a Chinese national come read about the oppression in her country had the potential to end very badly. Good thing it didn't.
What I learned from her...
Together we read the article and exchanged thoughts about what it might mean, for China, Norway, and the world. My suitemate's various reactions were all pretty educational to me. She was very aware of how much China exercises its ability to censor, and was thrilled with being able to see the New York Times article about the event and the Western take on it. She said, "I think these 'freedom' and 'human rights' things are very important to the United States and Europe, but they're not so important here. 'Human rights' isn't really... important to us."
As for the Chinese news...
We went to the Xinhua (official Chinese news) homepage, which still looks like a huge jumble of characters to me, but was obviously perfectly legible to my suitemate. She said there was only one, small article about the award, and that the news was saying how terrible and "blasphemous" (literally) it was for Mr. Liu to receive an award for disobeying Chinese law. The article, according to her, also explicitly said this would be damaging to China-Norway relations. About thirty minutes after we explored the contrasting Xinhua and New York Times articles, another suitemate walked in and asked if I could email her the Times article, as she couldn't find any news about the award through Chinese search engines.
Our conclusion...
Either this is going to be massively promoted as yet another Western tactic for trying to interfere with Chinese internal affairs, or it's going to be quietly ignored by the Chinese media in hopes that the attention will just go away. I guess we'll see what happens, but the government has to be uncomfortable right now being in the international spotlight for such an obviously negative reason. Let's see how this plays out.
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