Second time China faces a fallout from an unwelcome peace prize.

• Beijing blocks news of peace prize for dissident
• Dalai Lama demands immediate release of Nobel Peace winner

BEIJING (AFP) - Despite a warning to the Nobel committee and months of behind-the-scenes pressure, China failed to avert a harsh slap in the face -- the awarding of the Peace Prize to jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Beijing predictably slammed the win on Friday for the 54-year-old Liu -- the co-author of a bold manifesto calling for political reform who was jailed in December for 11 years for subversion, a sentence that won global condemnation.

China warned Norway that ties would suffer over the Nobel committee's decision, but experts called it a victory for human rights and said it should force communist-ruled China to reconsider its policies.

"If China wants to play an important role on the world stage, it must submit itself to universal values and respect freedom of expression," Jean-Philippe Beja, a China expert at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, told AFP.

Liu's win marked the second time that China has faced the fallout from an unwelcome peace prize.

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader seen by Beijing as a "splittist" bent on independence for his Himalayan homeland, was given the honour in 1989.

China mounted a vehement protest when the Buddhist monk was honoured, but Beja said times were different.

"China was more isolated then, it came on the heels of the Tiananmen crackdown and the imposition of sanctions against Beijing -- China had nothing to lose, and neither did the West," Beja said.

"Now, the situation on the international scene is totally different -- since the global economic crisis, the West has courted China," he added.

Bolstered by its growing global clout, Beijing pulled no punches in trying to head off the Nobel committee.

Late last month, the director of the Nobel Institute, Geir Lundestad, told AFP that Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying had issued a warning against awarding the prize to Liu in June, saying it would be an "unfriendly gesture".

Fu herself told reporters that honouring Liu would clash with the wishes of prizes founder Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist -- using language very similar to that used by Beijing in its reaction to Liu's win on Friday.

China's opposition "did not prevent the Nobel committee to give the prize to the Dalai Lama in 1989," Lundestad said.

The pressure did not work this time either.

By giving the peace prize to a Chinese dissident, the committee wanted to "protect itself from any accusation that it had ceded to the pressure," said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"The pressure applied is very strong," Bequelin told AFP, adding that Beijing has in recent years "developed an enormous lobbying operation" to ensure that dissident Chinese nationals do not win the peace prize.

Calling Liu's win a "victory for human rights around the world", Bequelin said the prize also marked "the end of the myth under which the Chinese government is the only one that can speak for the Chinese people".

While Beijing will see the awarding of the peace prize to someone they consider a "criminal" to be an affront, they will be obliged to deal with the fallout, experts said.

"A certain number of people within the system think the sentence handed down to Liu was too heavy. We can assume those people will have a stronger hand to play in the current debate" going on in the corridors of power, Beja said.

"In the short term, that could make conditions worse" for Liu in prison, but later on, "they will have to do something -- they can't be perceived as the junta in Myanmar is viewed," Beja said, adding that Liu could ultimately be released for "health reasons".