Norway, China restore ties after Nobel dispute
CHINA and Norway announced on Monday that they would normalise relations, six years after the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo opened a rift between the countries.
Neither nation explained the timing of the announcement, but analysts said Norway hoped to revive talks on a trade deal that stalled after the Nobel committee awarded the 2010 prize to Liu, a literary critic and political essayist.
The news accompanied an unannounced visit to Beijing by the Norwegian foreign minister, Borge Brende, who met with Premier Li Keqiang.
“Through meticulous and numerous conversations, the two sides have, over the last years, reached a level of trust that allows for resumption of a normal relationship,” they said in a joint declaration, which said Norway was “fully conscious of the position and concerns of the Chinese side” over the prize.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in a statement that “Norway deeply reflected upon the reasons bilateral mutual trust was harmed, and had conscientious, solemn consultations with China about how to improve bilateral relations”.
In the statement, Norway said it “fully respects China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, attaches high importance to China’s core interests and major concerns, will not support actions that undermine them, and will do its best to avoid any future damage to the bilateral relations”.
Rights advocates expressed concern that Norway might be caving on its longtime commitment to democracy and human rights.
“We are worried about some of the wording in the declaration,” John Peder Egenaes, secretary-general of Amnesty International in Norway, said. “If this sentence means the Norwegian government becomes subservient, we will criticise them for it. Time will tell. Human rights have been a foreign policy priority for Norway, and in particular support for champions of human rights. This policy has to apply to China, as much as to any other place.”
Stein Tonnesson, a historian and former director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, said the agreement was “of huge importance to Norway” because of the commercial potential. Norway’s salmon industry stands to benefit significantly.
Tonnesson said he doubted that the agreement would impair Norway’s reputation as an advocate for human rights, but he added that the timing – weeks after the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States – was significant.
“The deal with Norway might be one pawn in a greater game to secure and renew trade policy with other countries in Europe and elsewhere traditionally close to the US,” he said.
Liu, 60, was arrested in China in December 2008 and is serving an 11-year sentence for “inciting subversion of state power” by organising a petition urging an end to one-party rule.
The decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, composed of five members appointed by parliament but is independent of the government, drew outrage from the government in Beijing. China had warned the secretary of the Nobel committee against giving Liu the prize, and after the decision, Beijing cancelled meetings with Norwegian officials and it later halted the trade talks.
Even so, “the overall impact on trade, even in the seafood sectors, was not very profound, and bilateral trade hit record levels in 2015”, according to Marc Lanteigne, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
At the prize ceremony in December 2010, Liu was represented by an empty chair. It was the first time since 1935 – when the laureate was Carl von Ossietzky, a German pacifist detained by the Nazis – that no relative or representative of the prize’s recipient was present to accept the award.
In 2013, after voters ousted Norway’s centre-left government, the new con- servative government vowed to improve relations with China. Symbolic steps were taken in that direction.
The next year, a Norwegian museum announced that it would return seven columns taken from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, more than a century after they were acquired by a Norwegian cavalry officer, while the National Library of Norway said it would return to China a long-lost 1927 silent film, discovered in the library’s archives in 2011.
The chilly relations were also seen as a factor in the decision to demote the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the diplomat Thorbjorn Jagland, in March 2015, though he had also drawn criticism when the 2009 Peace Prize was awarded to President Barack Obama.
“No specific concessions have publicly been given on the Norwegian side, but the devil is always in the details,” said Bjornar Sverdrup-Thygeson, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. “The degree to which there is mutual understanding of the definition of this will be a thing to watch in the years ahead, in particular the next time the Dalai Lama plans a visit to Norway.”
Prime Minister Erna Solberg was criticised for not meeting with the Dalai Lama in May 2014, when the Tibetan spiritual leader visited Norway. The Chinese government views the Dalai Lama, in exile in India, as a separatist.