ANY PUBLIC relations professional would find China's response to the Nobel Peace Prize almost inexplicable. Liu Xiaobo, a dissident serving an 11-year sentence for peaceful advocacy of democratic reform, on Friday became the first Chinese citizen to win the prize. China's Communist rulers promptly pulled the plug on television broadcasts and ramped up Internet censorship so Mr. Liu's fellow citizens wouldn't hear the news. They detained two dozen fellow dissidents who attempted a private celebration in a Beijing restaurant. To the outside world, they fulminated about the "desecration" of the prize and threatened Norway with doleful consequences. And then, as icing on the cake, they placed Mr. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, under house arrest.
Self-destructive, from a PR perspective, but not in fact inexplicable. These reactions simply demonstrate, once again, how fearful China's rulers are of their own people. Deprived of the legitimacy that democracy can bestow, they must censor at home and bluster abroad. The more they do so, the more they affirm Mr. Liu's worldview. "A regime cannot establish its legitimacy by suppressing different political views," he wrote in his failed legal defense, "nor can it maintain lasting peace and stability through literary inquisition."
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