Beijing residents wonder: Liu Xiao-who?
BEIJING - LIU Xiaobo may be lauded by the international community for his tireless efforts to promote human rights and democracy in China, but the jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner's ideals remain a mystery to many in Beijing.
Ask a person the street what he or she thinks of Liu, whose award will be formally bestowed in Oslo on Friday, and the first reaction is often: 'Who?'.
That response is testament to the effectiveness of government efforts to erase the memory of the bloody crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, an event seminal to Liu's life.
'I think I saw something about that on television, but I'm not sure,' said businesswoman Ma Junpeng when asked about Liu.
Ms Ma shrugged her shoulders upon being told he had won the prize for his efforts since 1989 to push for greater political freedom in China.
'It's not rational to reward a man like that,' she said, shivering in the Beijing cold. 'Everything is different now since the revolt of 1989. People's ideas have changed. China has changed. People like Liu are irrelevant.' China jailed Liu last Christmas Day for 11 years for subversion of state power and for being the lead author of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for democratic reform in the one-party state
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