BEIJING — The Chinese government continued its vilification campaign against the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a jailed dissident, Liu Xiaobo, by canceling another meeting with Norwegian officials and lambasting the award as an affront to the Chinese people and a ploy to try to change the country’s political system, according to The New York Times.

"Some politicians from other countries are trying to use this opportunity to attack China,” Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters during a regularly scheduled news conference on Tuesday. He added that the prize, announced Friday, “shows disrespect for China’s judicial system” because the recipient is a convicted criminal.

Mr. Liu, 54, a veteran pro-democracy advocate, has been in jail since December, when a Beijing court sentenced him to 11 years for a manifesto he helped draft, Charter ’08, calling for political reform, human rights guarantees and an independent judicial system.

Although initially signed electronically by thousands of intellectuals, students and former Communist Party officials, Charter ’08 has since been blocked on the Internet and is largely unknown to most Chinese.

While criticizing the Norwegian committee that made the award, the Foreign Ministry spokesman provided no insight into whether the laureate’s wife, Liu Xia, would be allowed to collect the prize for him in Oslo in December.



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