China still at war over Nobel Peace Prize

One week on, and China is still smarting from the "hurt' it suffered when jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Can anyone expect a country to stay silent when its sovereignty and dignity are violated?" Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu demanded Thursday.

He told reporters that giving Liu the prize "is equivalent to encouraging crimes in China," and "a violation of China's judicial sovereignty."

And, just hours after Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan joined the ranks of world leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama, calling for Liu's release, Ma questioned their motivation.

"I wonder what their true intention is?" he demanded. "Is it because they resent China's development path and hate China's political system?"

Protesters in Hong Kong show their support for jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the Nobel Prize last week. Beijing has expressed anger over the award.

China's English-language media continued its assault on the award, too, with the Global Times saying in an editorial that the prize was part of a plan by developed nations to "harass China's growth."

It added: "Discrediting China is a way to maintain the moral superiority of the developed world."

In a column on the editorial page of the official People's Daily, Li Hongmei scoffed at the "Oslo elites" who selected Liu and said: "Yes, China has always wanted a Nobel Prize. But we will never want a prize subjected to abasement."

Ordinary Chinese are allowed to hear some of the government's denunciations and name-calling, but nothing about the winner except that he is a criminal and certainly nothing about how the rest of the world has reacted.

Only netizens with the wherewithal to bypass the Chinese censors have even a chance of getting a balanced view of the controversy the award has spawned or any sense of what Liu, who is serving 11 years in prison for daring to propose Beijing move gradually towards democracy and rule of law, did to merit his honour.

The advocacy group Reporters without Borders said in a statement: "The (Chinese) government's credibility will be badly damaged if it denies the Chinese people access to any information about Liu's Peace Prize except its own hostile reactions. Why do the Communist Party's leaders not let Chinese citizens judge the award's historic significance for themselves?"

The group said the independent Chinese PEN Centre has reported that 40 journalists and rights activists have been "held or questioned" since the prize was announced last Friday." Their crime was to try to celebrate Liu's win.