Fishy business with China

When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the dissident poet Liu Xiaobo in 2010, the Chinese government was furious. A spokesman for its foreign ministry described Liu as a ‘convicted criminal sentenced to jail by Chinese justice authorities for violation of Chinese law’ and said that giving him the prize was an act of ‘blasphemy against the peace prize.’

Norway was the natural focus of Chinese indignation, as it has administered the Peace Prize ever since Alfred Nobel, the Swedish dynamite millionaire, founded it. So China cancelled all imports of Norwegian salmon. Norway wasn’t bothered. It owns enough fish farms in Scotland to keep the China trade supplied -the only thing needed was an independent-sounding deal between China and the Nobel-free Scottish government.