Nobel prize will make China think twice: dissident author

(AFP) – 

LOS ANGELES — The Nobel Peace prize award to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo will make Beijing think twice about imprisoning critics in the future, a writer and friend of the new laureate said Friday.

Yu Jie, who published a book critical of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in August in defiance of a warning he could be jailed, said he stayed up late to find out who won the award -- and cried when he learned that Liu had won.

"I stayed up all night. My tears ran down," he told AFP.

Liu's award drew stinging criticism from Beijing as well as immediate calls from around the world for his release.

"Twenty years ago Liu Xiaobo said that China needed someone with moral clarity about what China needs. Now he has become just that person, that he himself was looking for," Yu said, speaking via a translator.

The Nobel award will make it better for other Chinese dissidents, Yu said.

"It will actually be much better for people like me and other critics and activists, because China will think twice before they put another person like Liu Xiaobo in prison," he said.

Yu is the author of "Wen Jiabao: China's Best Actor," which was published in Hong Kong in August despite threats from Chinese security agents, who warned in July that he risked jail time for the book.

On Thursday Yu told a student audience in Los Angeles that the publicity generated by the warning had backfired on Beijing, because it had boosted sales to over 10,000 copies, with plans to translate it for non-Chinese readers.

On Friday the author said the Nobel award for his fellow writer -- whom he calls a "close friend" -- made him happier to return to China.

"I am going to China in a couple of days. I am not apprehensive, because it gives me much more confidence in doing my work," he said.

Ann Lau, an Los Angeles-based Chinese rights activist involved in organizing Yu's US trip, compared the Nobel award to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.

"It was the same feeling as when the Berlin Wall came down. You wanted to cry you wanted to yell, so much emotion, finally we can see some light at the end of the tunnel," she said.

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