Damn. Remind me never to play a game of Machiavelli with Michael Turton!
All kidding aside, Occam's Razor suggests to me that China was sincere in its brutish objections to Liu Xiaobo's nomination and win. Thuggish is as thuggish does.
But I'll go further out on a limb and predict that within the next 3 or 5 years Liu will have company, when another Chinese dissident will be awarded the prize. And my reason for believing that is that the Chinese Communist Party REALLY hacked off the Nobel Committee. So much so, that the committee broke with precedent and leaked the name of the winner to the media a few days before the official announcement. (Hard to imagine a bigger F U being issued to the Butchers of Beijing.)
Remember how the Nobel committee spent the last 6 or 7 years repudiating George W. Bush? It was almost a steady stream – Mohammed ElBaradei…Al Gore…Barack Obama. (If I'm not mistaken, there were also a couple anti-American authors for the Literature Prize tossed in just for good measure.)
Message received. Loud and clear.
But one thing cannot be denied: in response to these rebukes, the American government did most assuredly NOT threaten the government of Norway, nor the livelihood of its people. Great powers get criticized, and they learn to live with it. Goes with the territory.
In contrast, the Communist government of China gave the Nobel committee only two alternatives: humiliating surrender, or honorable defiance.* One or two more Liu Xiaobo's this decade will drive home to the Chinese what stuff Norwegians are made of.
* During a conversation with some Taiwanese youths a few years back, one of them announced in all seriousness to me that "Face didn't matter to Westerners."
(No offence was intended by them. I think the subject came up when I remarked that I wouldn't feel any loss of face if I offered a last-minute dinner party invitation to a coworker, and they declined due to prior commitments.)
It's a view charming in its naivety when held by the young — but foolish to the extreme if it's held by the Chinese leadership.
UPDATE: An Indian reporter blogs on the Chinese media black-out.
UPDATE #2: Liu's not hard-line enough, protest some exiled Chinese dissidents. Sad.