The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo was very much an "own goal" for Beijing. Quite likely he would not have won if China had not made a crude and overt threat to the Norwegians that relations would suffer if Liu did get it. The Norwegian committee was thus pushed into showing that it was independent and could not be threatened.
According to Bowring
According to Bowring
According to Bowring
The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo was very much an "own goal" for Beijing. Quite likely he would not have won if China had not made a crude and overt threat to the Norwegians that relations would suffer if Liu did get it. The Norwegian committee was thus pushed into showing that it was independent and could not be threatened.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Asia Sentinel to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.