If you are not familiar with it, you have probably already heard of Charter 08. A manifesto, drafted by a group of Chinese dissidents and signed by thousands of people around the world inside and outside China, which led to Liu Xiaobo being sentenced to eleven years in prison.

Two days before being imprisoned he wrote a article, I have no enemies, which alone sheds light on the extent to which he is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. "But I still want to say to this regime, which deprives me of my freedom, that I stand by the convictions I expressed in my June 2nd Hunger Strike Declaration (he refers to June 1989 and the events of the Tianammen place ) twenty years ago: I have no enemies and I hate no one. None of the policemen who have controlled, arrested or interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who have accused me or the judges who have judged me are my enemies".

The award Nobel Peace Prize, as is well known, is not awarded by the Swedish Academy but by the Norwegian Nobel committee , but no one should deduce from this that Norway has a responsibility in the decision taken by the committee, just as it did not have a responsibility last year in a really conflicting choice: that of Barack Obama for the same award.

The wisdom of the 2010 choice can be seen in two contrasting reactions: in the almost unanimous congratulations of countries that take human rights seriously, but also in that of the Chinese government, which described the decision as "obscene". The director of the high school Norwegian Nobel Prize, Geir Lundestad, had already revealed that the Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fu Ying, had warned in Oslo of the negative effects for Norway of awarding the prize to Liu. And the Chinese government has summoned Norway's ambassador to Beijing.

This only proves the signatories of Charter 08 right, who pointed to the regression in freedoms in Chinese politics despite its undoubted economic progress. And this is one more sample of the confusion of spheres that still prevails in the Asian giant.