During the past month the Chinese government has launched a high-profile campaign criticising the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo. Mr Liu was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for "subverting state power", after he was found guilty of writing a political manifesto, Charter 08, which called for political reform in China. Mr Liu first came to public attention during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, when he helped to persuade some student demonstrators to leave the square instead of confronting the army. In an attempt to discredit the Nobel prize-giving ceremony, China has used both official and unofficial diplomatic channels to issue sinister but unspecific warnings of "consequences" for countries choosing to send representatives to the award ceremony for the prize in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

Despite the criticism, the ceremony went ahead in early December, with the non-attendance of Mr Liu symbolised by an empty chair; the last time a chair had been left empty in this way was in 1935, when Adolf Hitler had forbidden a German pacifist, Carl von Ossietzky, to attend the ceremony. China's diplomatic efforts ensured that 16 of countries refused their invitations to attend the ceremony (the Chinese government returning its own invitation unopened). The nations that decided not to send representatives included countries whose economies are heavily dependent on trade and investment links with China, such as Sudan, Sri Lanka and Iraq, as well as states that have problems of their own with political dissidents, including Egypt, Russia and Vietnam. The number of countries refusing to turn up would have been higher, at 17, had not Serbia decided to attend the ceremony at the last minute as a result of strong pressure from the EU and the US.

China's use of undiplomatic language-the Norwegian Nobel Committee were described as "clowns" engaged in a "farce"-is unlikely to have been persuasive abroad, although domestically the government's control of the press has enabled it to successfully depict Mr Liu as a traitor. China's response to this year's Nobel Peace Prize award, the setting up of a rival "Confucius Peace Prize" by a shadowy committee of local businessmen, contained elements of farce itself, as the recipient of the prize, Lien Chan, a former premier and vice-president of Taiwan who has been praised by China's ruling Communist Party for fostering links with the Chinese mainland, failed to turn up to receive his prize and apparently did not even know he had been awarded it.

There is little doubt that in terms of international public relations the whole episode has been a disaster for the Chinese government, which has put itself in a position in which it has been possible to compare it to some of the 20th century's most brutal regimes, including Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Poland under martial law, and Myanmar under the current military junta. Unfortunately for Mr Liu, the publicity generated by the decision to award him the prize means that he is likely to remain in jail for some time.