What the Nobel Peace Prize means for Chinese democracy

The award has been described as frivolous in years past but this time around it could really make a difference, according to the pundits.

On Friday the Nobel Committee awarded its prestigious peace prize to Liu Xiaobo, a 54-year-old Chinese dissident who’s currently in jail for advocating for open elections in the country. Past recipients of the prize like Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, and Barack Obama have generated no small degree of controversy, but Canada’s commentators are unanimous that this time the committee got it right.

Giving the award to Liu was “an inspired choice,” according to an editorial in the Edmonton Journal. As China becomes more powerful and foreign governments find it increasingly costly to vocally oppose Communist Party rule, the paper asks, “who will take up the cases of the many Chinese citizens unfairly detained and harassed”? Activism from inside the country, and validation of that opposition by nongovernmental bodies like the Nobel Committee, is now the best hope for positive change in China.

“Having risked its credibility a year ago by awarding its Peace Prize to U.S. President Barack Obama for little more than winning election on a platform of hope,” says a Winnipeg Free Press editorial, “the Norwegian Nobel Committee has returned to firmer -- and more useful – ground.”

The Nobel Committee has sent “a message to China that it is still an outlier, in spite of its emergence as a world power,” says a Globe and Mail editorial. “China should release Mr. Liu as a kind of promissory note for greater freedom of expression – a step on the way to a social transformation that cannot be forever restrained.” Stephen Harper made a similar entreaty last week to, seemingly, zero effect.

The National Post’s Stephen Taylor wonders why Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has been so silent following the award’s pronouncement, especially as China’s human rights record has been a bone of contention between he and Harper. “Ignatieff released a statement congratulating Barack Obama on his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize the day it was announced that the US president had won it. (As of Monday, Ignatieff had) yet to weigh in on the Nobel Committee’s bold statement.”