An honorable mention to President Hu Jintao and the Chinese Communist Politburo as well. (For without their tireless efforts, Liu's victory would scarcely have been possible!)
UPDATE #2: I knew that Liu had been sentenced to 11 years by the Communist politburo…but wasn't aware that Liu & his lawyers had only 14 minutes to defend him at trial. Can't wait to see Bev Chu & Taiwan's China Post spin the proceedings of that kangaroo court as a "fair trial".
UPDATE #3: "I have long been aware that when an independent intellectual stands up to an autocratic state, step one toward freedom is often a step into prison. Now I am taking that step; and true freedom is that much nearer." – Liu Xiaobo
UPDATE (Oct 9/2010): Gotta give Ma Ying-jeou & the KMT credit for at least pretending to be pleased with Liu's win. Hypocrisy may be the homage vice pays to virtue, but that's certainly more than Taiwan's China Post has done so far.
[Don't be so cynical, Foreigner — school bullying is a huge, HUGE story! Way bigger than the first Nobel Peace Prize won by a Chinese!]
Hours after the announcement, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) congratulated Liu for winning the prize and called on China to address human rights issues with a more liberal attitude.
The General-wuss-imo must be really worried about the coming elections, if he's that willing to piss off his Communist masters. What's next? An invitation to Rebiya Kadeer and the Dalai Lama to come help campaign for him?
What, no editorials from Taiwan's China Post, cheering on Liu Xiaobo for the Nobel Peace Prize? Whose struggle for freedom and democracy is something that Chinese everywhere can take justifiable pride in? Not a word from the newspaper which has stated that after a century, it's HIGH-TIME for a person of Chinese extraction to win?
Nope, guess not. Where once were glowing paeans for Beijing's '08 Olympics, are now only crickets for the frontrunner poised to become China's FIRST-EVER winner of the award. Chinese nationalists, indeed.
UPDATE: An Irish gambling company which allows people to wager on who will win the prize is apparently so confident that Liu Xiaobo will come out on top that they've stopped taking bets and started paying-off bettors 48 hours before the actual announcement.
Parting with their money before they absolutely have to suggests that they're completely nuts. Or that they know something the rest of us don't…
UPDATE #2: Beijing threatens to bring Norway its knees by withholding vital supplies of heavy metal-laced cigarettes. Which will be difficult for the Norwegians to substitute, since China controls at least 92% of all the world's rare earths cadmium-flavored tobacco products.
They'll take the whole archipelago. Chinese ultranationalists at Taiwan's China Post salivate not just over the Senkaku Islands, but over ALL the islands in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture.
The Senkakus? Merely an appetizer.
UPDATE: In claiming the Senkaku Islands for "China", the China Post of Taiwan refers to a Japanese map from 1783 (on which the islands are given the same color as China).
Hayashi Shihei, Japan's first cartographer, positioned the Senkakus as belonging to China in the eighteenth century.
Ergo, if you believe the Japanese map is irrefutable proof of China's ownership over the Senkakus, then you must also hold it to be irrefutable proof that Taiwan is an country independent of China.
Q.E.D.
(Hat tip to Ampontan, who was the first to make this observation)
Beijing's bellicosity wins friends and allies – for America. Danke schoen, Kaiser Hu Jintao.
Incidentally — and I speak only hypothetically — if China is justified in waging economic war against Japan over the Senkaku Islands, wouldn't America be justified in waging economic war against China for its currency manipulation? Robert J. Samuelson at the Washington Post seems to think so.
[Let's be clear though on this last point: As an economic subsidiary of Communist China, Taiwan would suffer terribly from a Sino-American trade war.]
Google went Galt in China earlier this year, and perhaps it's high time that Japan followed its example. Because both the Daily Yomiuri and Asahi Shimbun are reporting that Beijing is erecting politically-motivated customs trade barriers to cripple Japanese industry. From the Daily Yomiuri:
Shanghai customs authorities informed major Japanese transport firms last Tuesday of a decision to immediately boost the ratio of imports and exports subject to sample inspections at the city's customs house from the previous 30 percent to 100 percent.
Shanghai's quarantine authorities have also raised the ratio of quarantine inspections of commodities from the previous 10 percent to 50 percent, they said.
Because of the subsequent delay in the clearance and quarantine procedures, many air cargoes bound for Japan, including electronics parts, remain in Shanghai, according to the sources.
Similar measures have been taken at many other customs houses, including those in Fujian, Guandong and Liaoning Provinces…
"China has no choice but to take the necessary 'coercive measures.' "
And a mere three days later, Japanese prosecutors cut loose Captain Ramboat. A sad spectacle it must have been to watch them claim that their decision was based solely on the law…and then hear them quickly contradict this by declaring that the political importance of smooth Sino-Japanese relations was something they also had to consider.
Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper outlines the precise 'coercive measure' which may have been most instrumental in bringing Japan to heel:
A Chinese government source said Thursday that Beijing resorted to the harsh measure of stopping all exports of rare earth metals to Japan because "Japan had crossed over the red line."
The paper further reports that "a sense of shock, fear and helplessness" began to grow in the Japanese industrial sector, as managers discovered to their horror the folly of economic dependence on Asia's Communist behemoth. The Japan Times elaborates on this latter point:
Japan imported 31,383 tons of rare earths in 2008, of which 29,275 tons, or 92 percent [emphasis added], came from China…
92%. [And in another news, a hospital somewhere in Michigan recently granted Dr. Jack Kevorkian control over 92% of their life-support equipment. Because really, what could go wrong?]
The Asashi Shimbun reports that China's unofficial embargo was apparently not as clumsy or as random as a blaster:
The stoppage was designed to hurt Japan's high-tech industries, and it was apparently planned well in advance.
According to several sources, top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party issued instructions in mid-September to the Foreign Ministry, Commerce Ministry, State Development and Reform Commission as well as researchers covering Japan at government-affiliated think tanks to devise specific measures that could be imposed on Japan.
"Instructions were given to consider sanctions that would hit the Japanese economy where it is especially vulnerable," a Chinese government source said [emphasis added].
It's almost superfluous to point out that earlier this year, the Chinese Nationalist Party of Taiwan assured voters that the Communist Party of China would never, ever, EVER mix politics and economics. Signing a free-trade agreement with Zhongnanhai would be an economic shot in the arm for Taiwan — so the argument went — and there was absolutely no chance that becoming Beijing's industrial and commercial satellite would imperil Taiwan's democracy or its sovereignty.
Ask the Japanese whether that holds true today. Because the Taiwanese should be aware that the KMT's flimsy hypothesis now utterly without foundation.
The only question which remains is: When will Communist China choose to launch a similar assault on the economy of democratic Taiwan?
No way in hell that'll happen. They didn't have the stones to prosecute a mere Chinese fishing boat captain…but instead they'll take on China in a WTO courtroom, mano-a-mano?
