Norway and China have restored normal relations. Beijing cut off such relations in 2010, when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a leading Chinese dissident. The ruling Communists arrested Liu in 2008 and have imprisoned him ever since. They are also keeping Liu’s wife, Liu Xia, under a brutal house arrest.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee is independent of the Norwegian government, but this is not how Beijing sees it — understandably. In China, the government, i.e., the Communist party, controls everything. Why should it be different in other countries?
Do you remember when Vladimir Putin told George W. Bush that he (W.) had fired CBS’s anchorman, Dan Rather? That’s the mentality.
For decades, the Chinese democracy movement hoped that the Norwegian committee would award a Chinese democrat, a Chinese dissident. Decade after decade, the Chinese were passed over. In the 1990s, it looked like Wei Jingsheng would win. Alarmed, the Chinese government threatened the Norwegian government: If the committee gave the prize to Wei, there would be severe consequences for Norway.
The committee never awarded Wei. It never awarded any Chinese until 2010 — more than 60 years after the Communists established their one-party dictatorship in China.
Beijing was displeased, of course. They put Liu Xia under house arrest, so she could not attend her husband’s Nobel ceremony. They launched a cyberattack on the Norwegian Nobel Institute (home of the committee). They warned governments around the world to keep their ambassadors in Oslo away from the ceremony. Of course, many of them complied.
In a poetic touch, the Chinese Communists created a peace prize of their own: the Confucius Peace Prize. In this, as in so many other matters, they joined the Nazis and the Soviets. Both of those crews had created their own peace prizes in response to Norwegian decisions that displeased them. Among the winners of the Chinese prize? Putin and the late Castro, most prominently.
If you would like to know about the Nobel Peace Prize — its politics, its personalities, etc. — consult my Peace, They Say, a history.
Late though the Norwegian committee’s award to a Chinese democrat may have been, it was bold. Commercial relations with China are important to Norway. A few years after the prize to Liu, a veteran Norwegian journalist remarked to me, “That award put a dent in my pension.”
But all is evidently well now between Oslo and Beijing. By all accounts, the Norwegians performed an exemplary kowtow before the CCP. The Party’s foreign minister said, “Norway deeply reflected upon the reasons bilateral mutual trust was harmed, and had conscientious, solemn consultations with China about how to improve bilateral relations.”
I bet.
For its part, the government in Oslo swore that Norway “fully respects China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, attaches high importance to China’s core interests and major concerns, will not support actions that undermine them, and will do its best to avoid any future damage to the bilateral relations.”
No doubt.
Here in America, we have our own issue concerning Liu Xiaobo. I wrote about this in a recent post, here. By unanimous consent, the Senate passed a bill to rename the street outside the Chinese embassy in Washington “Liu Xiaobo Plaza.” (In the Reagan era, the government renamed the street outside the Soviet embassy “Andrei Sakharov Plaza.”)
The bill has been stifled in the House, controlled by Paul Ryan, Jason Chaffetz, and other GOP-ers. They may well have their arguments, which would be good to hear. So far as I know, the House Republicans have never spoken about their decision to stifle or kill the bill. I think they should — part of their job.