2009 Nobel Peace Prize said, "As Americans, we're proud when our president receives an award of that prestigious category". RNC chairman Michael Steele discussed his disapproval of the award in a fund-raising letter, writing, "the Democrats and their international leftist allies want America made subservient to the agenda of global redistribution and control." In 2015, Geir Lundestad, the non-voting Director of the Nobel Institute and secretary for the Nobel Committee at the time of the award, published a memoir, "Secretary of Peace". In it, he wrote "In hindsight, we could say that the argument of giving Obama a helping hand was only partially correct.
2010 Nobel Peace Prize of the 65 invited (the People's Republic of China and 19 other nations declined invitations). China's official news agency, Xinhua, attacked the West for its "Cold-War or even colonial mentality" and for daring to "regard themselves as the judge, the teacher [who] assume that they can forever distort the fact and block the truth by using political maneuvers." Strong rhetoric and denunciations of the West continued from official sources until after the ceremony. Liu was the first person of Chinese nationality to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and the first to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind