BEIJING  The harsh sentence handed down on Friday to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent campaigners for democracy and human rights, prompted strong rebukes in the United States and Europe, but it also raised fresh questions over whether the West has much leverage over a government that is increasingly self-assured on the world stage.  Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images  Police and plainclothes security personnel tried to move a protester away from a courthouse in Beijing where the human rights activist Liu Xiaobo was sentenced Friday.  Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images  Chinese police officers on Friday followed Western diplomats to the courthouse in Beijing.  Agence France-Presse — Getty Images  Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo with his wife, Liu Xia, in 2002.  By sentencing Mr. Liu to 11 years in prison for subversion, the Chinese government sent a chilling message to advocates of political reform and free speech. Mr. Liu, 53, a former literature professor who helped draft a manifesto last December that demanded open elections and the rule of law, was convicted after a closed two-hour trial on Wednesday in which his lawyers were allowed less than 20 minutes to state his case.  But many experts on Chinese politics said that Mr. Liu’s conviction on vague charges of “incitement to subvert state power” through his writing was also an unmistakable signal to the West that China would not yield to international pressure when it came to human rights. During his visit to China last month, President Obama raised Mr. Liu’s case with President Hu Jintao. Leaders of the European Union have been pressing for his release.  But a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry described such pressure on Tuesday as “gross interference in China’s judicial internal affairs.” The next day, more than two dozen American and European diplomats who sought to observe the trial were barred from the courthouse.  “If China’s Communist Party wanted to advertise to the world that they will do anything to protect their power and use the judiciary to accomplish that, then the persecution of Liu Xiaobo was a perfect vehicle,” Jerome A. Cohen, an expert on China’s legal system and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Friday.  The State Department issued a statement on Friday calling on China to release Mr. Liu, saying that the “persecution of individuals for the peaceful expression of political views is inconsistent with internationally recognized norms of human rights.”  Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said she was “dismayed” by the sentence. The United Nations said Mr. Liu’s conviction had thrown “an ominous shadow” over China’s commitments to human rights.  Such pointed criticisms are unlikely to have much impact, many China analysts said. Mr. Hu assumed full power in 2003 after a period of modest legal reforms. But under his leadership, the government has presided over a tightening of Internet restrictions, the repression of rights lawyers and the persecution of intellectuals who called for greater transparency and an end to single-party rule. Those who thought that the leadership might loosen its controls for the Beijing Olympics last year were disheartened by the crackdown that took place to prevent people from organizing demonstrations.  Edward Friedman, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said many people in the West had been clinging to the misguided notion that China’s economic development would quickly lead to political liberalization. “It’s clear that what matters most to the Chinese Communist Party is the survival of the regime and their monopoly on power,” he said.  Many human rights advocates partly blame Western political leaders for putting up with China’s growing intolerance of domestic dissent. They contend that as China’s economic power has expanded, the United States and Europe have been softening calls for human rights.  They were especially critical of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to Beijing last February, arguing that human rights took a back seat to an agenda focused on economic concerns and efforts to gain China’s cooperation in dealing with Iran and North Korea.  Many human rights advocates were also unhappy with Mr. Obama’s decision to put off a meeting with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, shortly before the president’s visit to Beijing. The move, they said, was intended to avoid offending China.  The White House insists that it is committed to promoting freedom, but says that it is trying to make its case without the public hectoring favored by the Bush and Clinton administrations. Mrs. Clinton has called the approach “principled pragmatism.”  Phelim Kine, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, said that quiet diplomacy was valuable at times, but that without real pressure from the United States, its largest trading partner, China had no incentive to improve its human rights record. “In the aftermath of the tragic conviction of Liu Xiaobo, we really need to think about how the U.S. is going to engage China and make sure that there are real benchmarks for progress,” he said.  He and others maintain that the United States and its allies must break free from a mentality that fears the economic might of a rising China. The United States can no longer prod China on human rights through the annual battle over “most favored nation” trading status, because China is now a member of the World Trade Organization. But human rights advocates say that the White House still has substantial leverage when it comes to trade.  And while China may hold hundreds of billions of dollars of the United States government’s debt, in the form of Treasury bonds and other Treasury securities, some analysts play down concerns about the possibility of China retaliating against American pressure over human rights by selling off its holdings. Gordon Chang, the author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” said that the Chinese government simply had nowhere else to park its swelling foreign reserves.  China’s huge trade imbalance with the United States, Mr. Chang said, is a potential cudgel that Washington should be prepared to use. “President Obama can get on the phone with Hu Jintao and say these are the things you need to do,” he said.  “We are extremely indulgent about irresponsible Chinese conduct when it comes to human rights,” Mr. Chang added. “We are encouraging the very type of behavior we’re trying to prevent.”  Mr. Friedman of the University of Wisconsin agrees that the United States should play hard ball but said that to have any chance of moving Beijing, such efforts must be coordinated with other countries that have significant trade with China. Otherwise, he said, the Chinese government can simply play one nation against the other. Even if you have unity on the issue, youre not guaranteed to win but without it, you dont stand a chance, he said.  When it comes to facing pressure from the West or agitation by activists at home, Chinese leaders do not want to appear weak. But in the end, they will place domestic concerns first -- and it is at this audience that crackdown on dissent is aimed. As use of the Internet has spread and uneven economic growth creates ever-larger gaps between rich and poor, the government is nervous about the potential for unrest that could threaten its power.  While they were not timid in their prosecution of Mr. Liu, the authorities made sure that coverage of his trial stayed out of the state-run news media.  Even as it questioned hundreds of people who signed Charter 08, the manifesto Mr. Liu helped to draft, government censors had any mention of the document quickly scrubbed from the Internet after it became public a year ago. There was one exception, however. On Friday, the English-language edition of Xinhua, the official news agency, published a brief item about Mr. Liu’s sentencing. The article said the court “had strictly followed the legal procedures in this case and fully protected Liu’s litigation rights.” The Chinese-language version of Xinhua, however, made no mention of the verdict. Instead, it declared 2009 the “year of citizens’ rights.”
Human rights advocates said the punishment of Liu Xiaobo, a human rights advocate was intended to send a message to others who might agitate for political reform.