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发帖数: 1883 | 1 Nobel Peace Priz: Another exercise in political cynicism
12 October 2010
Last Friday’s announcement awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese
dissident Liu Xiaobo was a highly political decision designed to stoke up
the issue of “human rights” in China on behalf of the US and European
powers.
This underscores the fact that China remains a police state that tramples on
the basic democratic rights not only of middle class dissidents, but of
hundreds of millions of working people. However, the decision to pluck Liu
Xiaobo from relative obscurity is not aimed at fostering democracy in China,
but rather is to further the interests of the European powers and the US
against a rising economic rival.
The US and European powers shed crocodile tears for the dead and imposed a
token arms embargo on China. Later that year the Nobel Peace Prize Committee
handed the 1989 award to the Dalai Lama in a further diplomatic slap in the
face to Beijing over “human rights”.
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu gives a boost to the
ideological component of the Obama administration’s aggressive campaign to
demand economic concessions from Beijing, particularly on the revaluation of
the yuan, and to undercut growing Chinese influence in Asia and
internationally. The lack of “human rights” in China is exploited to
highlight Chinese support for repressive regimes on the world stage such as
Burma and Sudan—while keeping a diplomatic silence, for instance, on the
oppressive US-led military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Over the past year, the Obama administration has aggressively reasserted US
strategic interests in Asia. Obama pointedly met with the Dalai Lama earlier
this year, despite protests from Beijing, and sold sophisticated weapons to
Taiwan, resulting in China putting an end to high-level military talks
between Beijing and Washington. At an Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) summit in July, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
supported ASEAN members in their territorial disputes with China in the
South China Sea. Most recently, the US tacitly backed Japan in its
diplomatic row with China that erupted over disputed islets in the East
China Sea.
The Nobel Peace Prize announcement came amid the rising danger of a “
currency war” over the undervalued Chinese yuan. The US House of
Representatives recently passed a bill enabling Washington to impose tariffs
on China for allegedly manipulating its currency. At the International
Monetary Fund meeting last weekend, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
again called “on countries whose currencies are significantly undervalued”
—that is, China—to do more to boost domestic consumption and rebalance
global growth.
“Chinese bullying” is becoming the rallying point around which the US is
seeking to marshal support to throw its own weight around in Asia and
internationally. By enlisting in this ideological campaign, the Nobel
committee is not advancing “peace”, but is helping to fuel the drive to
currency and trade wars that ultimately will produce war itself. |
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