Chinese Govt. Blacks Out News of Dissident Liu Winning The Nobel Peace Prize | Hacker News Reader

Chinese Govt. Blacks Out News of Dissident Liu Winning The Nobel Peace Prize

npr.org

44 pointssharadgopal23 comments

"It was not clear if Liu himself had been told about the Nobel."

This has to be one of the first, if not the first case of someone winning a Nobel Peace Prize and not being immediately allowed to know they'd won. The article mentions that he is the first to win it while still imprisoned, as opposed to simply under house arrest. Imagine winning one of humanity's highest honors, but the very censorious state you fought against keeps you from knowing even that simple fact!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11499098

"Mrs Liu said police had informed her they would take her to Mr Liu's prison in the north-eastern province of Liaoning on Saturday so she could give him the news."

Actually, Carl von Ossietzky was awarded Nobel Peace Prize while he was in prison. At that time, Adolf Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany.

I'm not big on the Nobel Peace Prize, though I guess they're improving their average over last year. But man, I love Norway:

China declared the decision would harm its relations with Norway - and the Nordic country responded that was a petty thing for a world power to do.

That sentence made me laugh out loud. If this sentence were illustrated in a political cartoon, I would picture a Chinese Goliath sitting down to have tea at the table of international relations and being scolded by an old Nordic spinster for manners unbecoming of a young world power.

That ought to be "Chinese Govt. Blacks Out News of Dissident Liu Winning The Nobel Peace Prize". As originally written, it was kind of like saying "News of Dissident Bob..."

The Chinese put their family name first, and the given name second. Sometimes it's ambiguous because you don't know if the media report is westernizing the presentation. But in this case it's clearly wrong, because the two-syllable "Xiaobo" must be a given name because it's got two syllables.

The chinese given name is not always comprised exactly of 2 syllables; there are single syllable chinese given names.

Indeed. His Wikipedia page says that he is "married to Liu Xia."

Read the comment again. You've misread its Boolean logic (assuming it hasn't been edited).

I know nothing about Chinese names but the original comment might have meant that it must be a given name because a family cannot have two syllables. No idea if that's true or not though!

chinese family names can have multiple syllables. Not often, but they do exist. Most times it's caried from ancestry that's not han chinese but there are so many ethnicities and so much intermixing within china that family name no longer carries any signifiers to bloodline, etc

> But in this case it's clearly wrong, because the two-syllable "Xiaobo" must be a given name because it's got two syllables.

And it's confirmed by the fact that his wife is Liu Xia.

Wives don't take their husbands' family names in China. If she is named Liu, it's just a coincidence (Liu is one of the most common family names).

Thank you for teaching me something new. Wikipedia agrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Married_and_maiden_names#China_...

edited.

"Attempts to send mobile text messages with the Chinese characters for Liu Xiaobo failed."

Not only the internet, but also the text messaging channels are under censorship. China looks like a country that came out of a political horror movie.

I think we all have it in ourselves to be petty dictators, even to the point of convincing ourselves it's for the greater good.

When we have a teaspoon of power as parents, managers or customers, is it not tempting to hide the truth and impose our wills without concern for our subordinates?

I have to work on this constantly as a father. The greatest thing is when I loosen the reins and give my 3 year old son more freedom, and he comes around to do the "right thing" without being forced. I'm so much prouder of him than if he was just following me out of fear.

I don't understand what they hope to accomplish. I can understand the (flawed) reasoning behind blacking-out news regarding certain events, such as how the Chinese government handles protesters, human rights violations in China, etc.

But this news item is a single fact. There aren't any "details" to cover up - the fact, comprised of a single statement "The noble peace prize is being given to a Chinese dissident" is nothing you can cover up. It's a single, standalone declaration, you can't apply spin, you can't really do _anything_ with it, other than simply know that it occurred. This kind of stuff is hard to "black-out" and it's rather pointless to do so.

The only way to combat news items like this would be to attack it, not hide it.

Years ago I started to wonder how long China could keep this whole game of censorship. I thought that they would inevitably become more open as their contact with foreign countries increased.

This hasn't happened, has it? What I see instead is an ever increasing and pretty scary control apparatus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo is unsurprisingly blocked.

That wikipedia page states that Liu's lawyers informed him today that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Is it possible to know who proposed Xiaobo for Nobel?

This hardly seems like a surprise.

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