Will China lash out further at joining elite Nobel club?

Two weeks before Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo receives the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia, Norwegians are looking warily east, wondering what the world's most populous mercantile power will do to them for honouring the jailed co-author of a pro-democracy manifesto. At least half a dozen countries appear to have buckled under Chinese pressure to stay away from the Dec. 10 award ceremony in Oslo. But before China lets the next shoe drop (possibly killing a free-trade deal with Norway) it ought to realize that the Nobel committee has elevated it to a club that includes the United States, Russia and Germany. Those countries all had to deal with peace-prize-winning dissidents who questioned national claims to superpowerdom. Without openly addressing the laments of King, Sakharov and Ossietzky, those countries would lack the global legitimacy they now enjoy -- frayed as it may be.