China’s First Medal?

The Nobel Foundation has been known to pick dark-horse candidates to drive home an ideological point (see Al Gore). How intriguing, then, that the Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute is fingering Chinese activist Hu Jia as a front runner for this year's Peace Prize.

To hand China's first Peace Prize to a little-known dissident would be a rebuke to its leaders, who tout themselves as stewards of China's "peaceful rise" to great power status. With China in the global spotlight, the Nobel committee may decide the time's ripe to draw attention to Beijing's human-rights record and its failure to uphold pre-Olympic promises of greater civil freedoms.

So why Hu? He's popular among European activists for a November 2007 Webcam address to EU parliamentarians—shortly before his arrest—that criticized Beijing's suppressive policies. Whether the Nobel committee risks antagonizing Beijing will be revealed on Oct. 10 in Oslo.