Wow.  News today that Dr. Gao Yaojie will be allowed to travel to the US in March to receive the award she was due: 

“We’re just really excited about it,” said Wenchi Yu Perkins, an
officer with Vital Voices Global Partnership, a nonprofit women’s
advocacy group that will honor the doctor, Gao Yaojie, in March along
with other women from around the world.

“I just talked to Dr.
Gao,” Ms. Perkins added. “She confirmed that last night an official
visited and informed her that they would respect her wish to come to
the U.S. I think that is the best gift for her for the Chinese New
Year.”

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton,
an honorary co-chairwoman of Vital Voices, announced China’s decision
on Friday after receiving the news from the Chinese ambassador in
Washington. Mrs. Clinton said in a statement that she was “delighted”
and that she had been assured that Dr. Gao would “be allowed to travel
freely to the United States.”

 Wiser heads in the Communist Party obviously realized that the whole affair was making them look like fools to the entire world, and they decided to cut their losses.  Good.  I am glad that they backed down and Dr. Gao can continue with her work.

     And I hope – but I doubt – that the party will learn from this that the old repressive tactics will backfire on them in the glare of the global internet.  They get away with a lot of brutish repression every day but this episode suggests that, when international attention is turned on them, things can change for the better.

     The final caveat, however, is that, even though she is free for now, Dr. Gao and all of us must remember that politics never ends.  Party bureaucrats may well try to get back at her later, when they think the world is no longer watching.  For every good day, there are many, many that will follow during which the tide could turn.  Global attention helped her this time; let’s keep that attention up for her and for other good and humane Chinese activists.