Chinese Media Silent On Nobel Winner

Imprisoned Liu Xiaobo wins one of the world's highest honors, but most of his countrymen have no idea. Web search engines return error messages for his name. The few who try to celebrate are arrested.


From Megan Stack, LATimes.com:

The silence was conspicuous in China on Saturday.

Dissident Liu Xiaobo languished in a prison cell, possibly unaware that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a day earlier. His wife was incommunicado after telling a reporter she was being taken away by police.

And the Chinese news media appeared determined to pretend that nothing had happened.
As for most Chinese, they didn't have to pretend. Many of them don't know Liu exists, let alone that he has been honored with the world's most coveted award.

This is the paradox of China: It's an economic superpower that is very much a part of the world and yet, at times, separate from it.

On Saturday, the world was there, with TV news reports of the toxic sludge in Hungary and other global events. There was one enormous exception, however: The Nobel Peace Prize, meant to appeal to the best in humanity and break down borders, didn't much exist for Chinese speakers.

Only the Global Times, an English-language newspaper put out by the Chinese government, carried a stinging rebuke in its Saturday editions.

Liu, the newspaper's unsigned editorial said, is "an incarcerated Chinese criminal." Awarding him the prize was a "paranoid choice" that was "meant to irritate China." The Nobel Peace Prize has been "degraded into a political tool that serves an anti-China purpose".

Read more here.