Monday Oct 28, 2013 | Christopher Bodeen for The Associated Press
Norway snub shows sharp edge of Chinese diplomacy
Credit: The Associated Press
3-year snub of Norway over Nobel Peace Prize award shows sharp edge of Chinese diplomacy
BEIJING (AP) — Mainly associated with conflict
resolution, foreign assistance and cozy Scandinavian prosperity, Norway
makes an odd target for China's ire.
Yet for three years, Beijing has frozen relations with
Oslo since a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament awarded the
2010 Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo,
deeply embarrassing China's leaders. Diplomatic ties have been gutted,
meetings canceled and economic ties hamstrung by an unofficial partial
embargo on Norwegian salmon and a freeze on trade talks.
The protracted snit shows the lengths Beijing will go
to punish other nations for offenses or perceived slights. It's one of
several relentless spats China has maintained with countries as varied
as Japan and Lithuania, aimed at winning concessions and discouraging
criticism.
China considers such retaliation the best way to draw
attention to "issues that they consider core interests that other states
do not at first easily grasp," said Andrew Nathan, an expert on Chinese
politics at New York's Columbia University.
Yet, such fits of pique also come at a price.
Maintaining a grudge against Norway over Liu reminds other countries of
China's poor human rights record, even while Beijing is seeking to be
taken seriously on international stage. China is seen as defining its
interests all too narrowly in a way that upsets the usual give-and-take
among nations, said Boston University China scholar Joseph Fewsmith.
"I think China hurts its reputation. China needs to
think more about providing the public goods that maintain the
international system," Fewsmith said.
The spat with Norway entered the news again this month
when the installation of a new Norwegian government offered an
opportunity to end the rift. Instead, a Chinese Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman demanded Norway take "concrete action to create conditions
for improving and developing bilateral relations."
"Whoever tied the ring around the tiger's neck must
untie it," Hua Chunying told reporters, using a familiar Chinese
expression to apportion blame.
But China has not said what it wants Norway to do.
While the Nobel is awarded in Oslo by the parliament-appointed
committee, the Norwegian government has no direct say in who gets it. At
the time of the award, Beijing bitterly accused Norway of insulting
China by interfering in its internal affairs and glorifying a criminal.
Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison after
co-authoring a document calling for sweeping changes to China's
one-party political system. His wife has also been placed under illegal
house arrest and his brother-in-law jailed on what supporters say are
trumped-up fraud charges.
Norway's Foreign Ministry declined to respond to
specific questions about China ties, but spokesman Svein Michelsen said
Oslo is hopeful of better relations.
"Norway's new foreign minister, Mr. Borge Brende, has
confirmed that re-establishing good relations with China is a key
priority and will pursue the available opportunities toward this end,"
Svein Michelsen said.
Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of Modern
International Relations at Tsinghua University, says China expects some
at least symbolic act of contrition, although he didn't say exactly what
form that should take.
"We find it difficult to forgive these foreigners who
support (Liu's) views insulting the Chinese people," said Yan, a
hardliner whose views closely mirror those of Chinese leaders.
China's retaliation seeks to exact real economic pain.
According to the Norwegian Seafood Council, Norway's share of China's
salmon market plunged from 92 percent in 2010 to 29 percent in the first
half of this year. While the Norwegian salmon industry remains robust,
operators are wary of what this portends as China's appetite for salmon
grows.
Along with barriers on Norwegian salmon imports,
Beijing has abandoned yearslong talks on a bilateral free trade
agreement and excluded Norwegians from visa-free treatment on brief
visits to China. Norwegian businesspeople, journalists and academics
have been denied visas for unexplained reasons.
Similarly, economic exchanges with Britain were held up
after David Cameron met last year with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled
Buddhist leader, whom China reviles as a separatist. Those exchanges
were restored only this month following London's assurances that Cameron
had no further plans to meet the 78-year-old cleric.
China also was critical of Lithuania for hosting the
Dalai Lama. Many other nations have suffered similarly for angering
Beijing over issues such as Dalai Lama, human rights, territorial
disputes and support for Beijing's rival Taiwan. Beijing banned Filipino
bananas and disinvited the country's president to a regional trade
meeting following a dispute over islands in the South China Sea.
Relations with Japan, always complicated by lingering
ill will over World War II, have sunk to new lows since Tokyo last year
nationalized a group of uninhabited islands claimed by China.
In Beijing's calculus, not all nations are equal
offenders, however. Although Chancellor Angela Merkel met with the Dalai
Lama in her official office in 2007, Germany is a key economic partner
and Beijing issued barely a peep. Beijing also tends to overlook the
Dalai Lama's meetings with U.S. officials in deference to its crucial
relationship with Washington.
The lack of a common policy in the West toward China's
trip-line issues allows Beijing broad freedom to react, and European
states especially are quick to capitalize when a neighbor falls afoul.
Norway's loss in salmon exports, for example, has been a boon to other
exporters, especially Scotland and the Faroe Islands.
While Beijing punishing Norway offers little risk, some
question what China ultimately gains. Chinese leaders appear to have
locked themselves into a game of political chicken from which they don't
dare back down, said Marc Lanteigne, a China scholar at Victoria
University in Wellington, New Zealand.
Beijing may find other interests outweigh punishing
Norway, particularly its desire for economic cooperation in navigating
newly ice-free shipping routes in the Arctic and accessing Norwegian
expertise in deep-water oil drilling, Lanteigne said.
"I would say that China's handling of the Nobel Prize
affair has accomplished little for Beijing and I think the Chinese
government is seeking the best way of breaking the ice, so to speak,"
Lanteigne said.
Thus far, though, Beijing seems to expect Norway to make the first move.
Leadership is not about your position,
is about the life you have influence. By: Friday onyebuchi 
