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AFP: Official mainland Chinese-language mouthpieces have launched a campaign criticising the Norwegian Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize to prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo on October 8. Xinhua, the official news agency, attacked the Nobel committee yesterday for ignoring China’s human rights development by honouring “convicted Chinese criminal Liu Xiaobo”. Previously the campaign was confined [...]

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Paul Krugman is must-read today on China qua rogue economic superpower: China’s response to the trawler incident is, I’m sorry to say, further evidence that the world’s newest economic superpower isn’t prepared to assume the responsibilities that go with that status. Major economic powers, realizing that they have an important stake in the international system, [...]

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Michael Wines of the New York Times: A group of retired Communist Party officials and intellectuals issued an unusually blunt demand on Tuesday for total media freedom in China, stating that the current regime of censorship and government control of the press violates China’s constitution and debases the government’s claim to represent its citizens. The [...]

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My good friend and former coworker Tenzin Dorjee is the Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet. He has an op-ed at Huffington Post titled “China’s Theft of Tibetan Ballots Threatens Democracy Everywhere.” On October 3rd, at the behest of the Chinese government, Nepali security forces stormed into voting stations and confiscated ballots cast [...]

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Today jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This is really an incredible statement by the Nobel Committee and a great push for democracy and human rights in China. Liu Xiaobo is one of China’s most prominent democracy and rights advocates, currently serving an 11 year prison term for calling for democracy, [...]

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I can’t believe I missed this, but ten days ago my favorite punching bag Nick Kristof wrote about Tibet and China. It’s the usual mixed bag, where you can see Kristof struggling with some principles of peace, social justice and democracy while maintaining his usually strong pro-Beijing compass. The central discussion of the article is [...]

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High Peaks Pure Earth has posted translations of two popular Tibetan songs about unity by prominent Tibetan musicians. Here’s a piece of the analysis: Both songs share the same topic of unity amongst Tibetans but are markedly different in style. Whilst these two songs indicate that Tibetan identity and unity amongst all Tibetans were themes [...]

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This first broke earlier this week on Phayul, but Radio Free Asia now has more details. Chinese security forces opened fire on a crowd of Tibetans who were peacefully protesting in Palyul county. The Tibetans were protesting ” the expansion of a gold mining operation they say is harming the environment.” The shooting took place [...]

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Ellen Bork, the Foreign Policy Initiative‘s Director of Democracy and Human Rights has a really great piece on how the Obama administration is failing to pursue a clear Tibet policy, to the detriment of Tibet and possibly in violation of statute. Of note from the piece, which should be read in its entirety: The administration’s [...]

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This is interesting: With over 600,000 people, including hundreds of Chinese, following him on networking site Twitter, the Dalai Lama has said the non-resolution of the Tibet issue is making the voices of those seeking independence of Tibet from China grow stronger. Answering questions from his Chinese followers on Twitter, which he joined last month, [...]

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